


on a wing and a prayer

by shieldivarius



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Gen, Patriarchy & Misogyny, Platonic Life Partners, Politics and War, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1986150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If torment that lives in the heart of the ruler can poison the land, so too, can peace at heart inspire and engender prosperity and growth. But some attract misfortune, and no amount of peace at heart can stop borders from becoming bloody or hold realms back from becoming entrenched in war when the first skirmishes start.</p><p>In their newly joined <i>Enchanted Dominion</i>, Maleficent and Aurora must navigate the unpredictable undercurrents of the politics of the realm in the wake of Stefan's death, trying to create a balance that allows Aurora to find her footing as a monarch and Maleficent to withdraw from the memories of absolute dominance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Long fic ahoy! We're looking at probably 75k by the time everything is said and done. Look for postings roughly once a week.
> 
> Aurora and Maleficent's relationship is so multi-layered and delightfully complex that I'm both unable and unwilling to pigeonhole it into being any one thing. Is that fence sitting? Maybe, but I've chosen to classify their relationship in this fic as being both platonic and romantic. Read and interpret as you will.

_Protector of the Moors._

In her youth, Maleficent had embraced the title. Her wings had swept her across hill and dale, through the valleys and amongst the craggy, rocky teeth that grew out of water and ground, speckled through the land of the faeries. A land then untouched by scarring darkness.

With pearls decorating her horns and laughter in her heart, she’d stood first amongst equals—for most of its history the Moors had had no real ruler. They rallied behind her power, and leadership, to protect their home from the world of iron outside of their dense forest borders but when the battle ended they were on even footing again. 

_Protector of the Moors._

A mockery to take the title back up now, though the mantle had again fallen upon her shoulders. For nearly two decades the Moors had needed protection from her and the ruthless, dark cascade of power she’d poured across them; the mortar of the wall she’d built around her heart.

Aurora’s coming into her life, the return of her wings and Stefan’s death had combined, slowly, to lighten her. Her step poisoned the Moors no longer, and twenty years was nothing to the faerie folk—a mere blink of the eye in a world where time passed as nothing. So, the trees and flowers blossoming around them again, and the touch of a smile on her lips, had earned Maleficent the forgiveness of the Moors.

Forgiveness she didn’t deserve, from an entire population she’d hurt as badly and inexcusably as Stefan had hurt her. She wanted them to be wary. Not because she craved their fear, not that, never again, but because they hadn’t learned how quickly the world could turn on them. How quickly trust could be broken and ground beneath a betrayer’s foot.

Maleficent gave two great beats of her wings and brought herself from soaring upon the warm, rising currents to breaking through the layer of wispy clouds above her. Dewy droplets clung to her eyelashes, the sunlight catching them and sparkling and shooting fragmented bits of rainbows into her vision. Her hair lifted and tangled around her horns, pushed back and forth by the winds rushing at her face and beat back by the gusts formed by her wings as she kept herself stable in the strong currents. 

She surveyed the land far below with a careful eye, alert for signs of anything amiss along the borders. Rumours were starting to creep through the Moors, whispers of scouts from the human lands beyond starting to show themselves in the very edges of the forest. None from Aurora's lands, of course. She and her counsel bade their subjects to leave the Moors be, and it was a combination of that Royal decree and entrenched fear of the evil faerie that still lived within the Moors that kept the curious away. Twenty years of fear was a long time for humans. Far longer than it was for faeries.  

_Protector of the Moors._

Maleficent spent most of her time above the clouds now, studying the borders and maintaining the near-exile she'd assumed. Possibly, she was being over-dramatic about it all, but for so long Diaval had been her only companion and it shamed her to say it, but the chattering of some of the faerie races gave her a headache. The silence of the skies above the Moors, far above where any of the others could fly and where the sound of her own thinking was broken only by the winds buffeting her ears, had become her refuge.  

She’d become a recluse, truly, even more than she had been during the years before the curse on Aurora had been broken. Protecting the lands that stretched, wide and lush and green in every direction, below her didn’t take up as much time as she pretended it did. Not in times like these when peace reigned the same as it had since Maleficent herself wasn’t even grown.

A dark shape spiralled below her, soaring on rising currents and then flapping its wings to gain height until he was close enough for Maleficent to identify Diaval, swooping toward her. She drifted into an updraft, wings open and still, full of the warm air, and he flew around her head once with a caw lost on the wind almost at once.

Maleficent tilted her head and smiled to tease him, not ready to return to the ground yet and more than willing to pretend she didn’t understand his message until she was.

Diaval cawed again, far enough away that it wasn’t anything more than the opening and closing of his beak, with the sound not reaching her ears at all. There was a line to his neck and a glint in his eye that Maleficent had long ago learned was ire, though, and she giggled before flipping over backward. The momentum, and sudden closing of her wings, left her plummeting downward head first in a dive. A grin spread across her face at the free feeling of the wing rushing through the tangles in her hair and skimming across her wings and horns, coursing past her ears with a loud whistle.

She rolled into a spiral in the middle, and then threw her wings open, catching herself ten feet from the ground and alighting on bare feet on the cliff next to her tree. Diaval landed on a branch near her a moment later, and she raised an eyebrow at his annoyed look.

Maleficent tugged her hands through her hair, smoothing it out and raking sharp nails through some of the tangles before she flicked her fingers at him, gold magic trailing from the tips of them and morphing him to human form.

“You’re going to break your neck one day,” he said, and they’d had this conversation before. Once every couple of months, in fact, since she’d regained her wings. Any time she took a plummeting dive through the air and he had trouble keeping up, though he’d backed off some eventually. When she’d first regained her wings, Diaval had acted like he had to teach her to fly again, and never mind that it wasn’t something she was liable to forget.

“Is that what you called me down for?” she asked, not hiding her displeasure at the thought.  

He nodded behind him, toward the bordering kingdom. “Aurora’s come to visit,” he said. “Didn’t notice _that_ while you were up hiding in plain sight, did you?”

A flap of her wings and Maleficent was airborne again. "I don't need to watch for armies from the east," she reminded him, instead of denying that she'd been doing any sort of hiding. After all, he was right and he knew it. "If they want to invade from that direction they'll have obstacles long before they reach our borders."

Diaval didn't look convinced. "Change me back," he said. She raised an eyebrow. "Well, go on!"

She rolled her eyes but did as he bade, rising up and swooping away herself before the transformation was even complete. 

Diaval caught up to her as she landed again in a swirl of brown robes in front of Aurora, who was tethering her horse to a tree. The young queen's hair trailed down her back, unbound and tousled from her ride, and her clothes lacked ornamentation, the pale blue overdress almost provincial in its simplicity. Her cheeks were pink from the wind in her face, and her eyes were wide and laughing as she reached up to pet Diaval, perched on the pommel of her saddle. 

"She won't wander, you know," Maleficent said as Aurora turned, and nodded at the horse, who'd already begun eating the leaves from the nearest tree branch.

"I'd like her to be just where I left her when I return, and I'm afraid I don't have your touch."

Maleficent smiled, and came over and unbound the horse's tether. She touched the mare on the nose and guided her head so that she looked it straight in the eye. A trail of magic escaped her fingertips and the horse pulled away with a soft wicker before bowing its head and mouthing at the grass by her feet.

"She'll never listen to me again," Aurora said, voice heavy with mock lament.

"Don't be ridiculous," Maleficent chided. 

Aurora beamed at her, one hand stroking down the mare's mane. It had been some months since Maleficent had last seen her, and a shadow lay under her eyes, faint but purpled all the same. Exhaustion, and a dark cast to serve as a reminder of just how human Aurora was, and the calibre of the demands that world made on her. 

"Come," Maleficent said, extending a hand and gesturing deeper into the glade, toward the jeweled ponds that glimmered in the sun below. "We'll talk." 

Aurora clasped her hands together in front of her a moment before reaching into a pouch tied to her belt and pulling out a tightly rolled scroll of parchment. "I have something for you, first," she said, and held it out. 

Maleficent gave the scroll a sceptical look, with her brows raised high toward her hairline. One long-fingered hand reached out and plucked the soft, bound roll from Aurora, index finger playing with the string that tied it shut. "What's this about?" she asked. She beckoned Aurora to follow her again, eager to get her off of her feet and resting as soon as possible.

Aurora wrung her hands but skipped forward. "It's an invitation," she said. Diaval launched himself from his perch to sit on Maleficent's shoulder, body posed to peer around the edge of her wings and at Aurora. Maleficent obliged the hint and folded them away, flight feathers dragging on the ground behind her. 

"For what?" she asked. She slipped the string off of the parchment and unrolled it slowly, running her gaze across the fancy, gilded script on it. The series of squiggles meant nothing; reading and writing was an invention of the world of iron that held no benefit for her to learn, but someone had put time into carefully scribing out the letters on the page, and when she ran the pad of her finger across them she could feel where the tip of the quill had etched in to deposit the ink.

"My formal coronation," Aurora said, and when Maleficent looked up at her, confused, she caught Aurora staring at her hands on the letter. 

Maleficent allowed the scroll to spring back into its roll. "You've been queen for nearly three years." 

"Yes, but..." Aurora still had an interested, curious look in her eye when she raised her gaze back to their path. "The court wouldn't have taken well to crowning a princess who had been raised in a cottage in the woods by faeries so early. I've been ruling with a Regent."

"You've never mentioned," Maleficent said.

"I've told you about my lessons."

She had that, at least. All manner of things that bored Maleficent to hear, about crops and industry and issues with currency that she didn't quite understand but had tried to extract meaning about from Aurora's explanations of the things her tutors had been teaching her. 

Diaval pecked at her ear, giving the pointed tip a sharp nip of his beak. She knocked him from her shoulder and changed him back to human in the same motion, so he barely landed on his feet, and caught himself with his arms thrown out in an ungraceful stumble. Aurora giggled.

"Pest," Maleficent said lightly. Diaval glared at her, before turning to Aurora with his chest puffed out, still more bird than man even after all these years. Aurora leapt forward and threw her arms around him with a laugh, beaming ear to ear. He grasped her tightly for a moment before stepping back.

They reached the edge of the glittering jewel pond and Maleficent bent, skimming her hands across the gnarled roots of the tree growing nearest the bank and encouraging them to coil up and wrap around themselves, forming into a reclined bench cushioned with moss. Flowers, bright pink and yellow and the size of her hand, trailed from a vine along the back of it.

Aurora sat down and kicked her riding boots off, then tugged her stockings down and threw them all into a heap together so she could trail her bare toes along the surface of the water. Biting down on her lip, she pulled her feet out and stuck them in a couple of times, acclimating to the coolness of the water, before finally leaving her big toes submerged. Smiling at Maleficent, she patted the empty space next to her.

"You'll come. Won't you, Godmother?" she asked, her blue eyes wide and beseeching.

Maleficent sighed and lifted her wings out of the way so that she could take the seat. "I don't think your people would be so happy to see me, Beastie." She hadn't ventured out of the Moors since regaining her wings. Hadn't seen any need, as hard as it had been to not check up on Aurora in the castle when she went months between visits. She sent Diaval in her stead, as she always had. It would be better for Aurora all around, anyway, if they didn't act in any way that might make court and counsel think that Maleficent was influencing their queen. 

Aurora scrunched up her nose, thoughts no doubt nowhere near Maleficent's own. “I would be,” she said, and the words were so simple Maleficent went still. A tiny nymph saved her having to respond at once, floating up to Aurora and chattering welcoming nonsense at her, one long arm extended. Aurora, as she always did,greeted the faerie in kind, and two pale fingertips touched the blue and green patterned hand.

“It would mean that much to you?” Maleficent asked as the nymph drifted away from them again.

“Yes, of course!” she grabbed for Maleficent’s hands, lifted them and wrapped them as much as she could in her own. They were small and soft, nails neatly trimmed and dainty next to Maleficent’s own—hard, sharp and more talon than nail. Maleficent stared down at their joined hands for a long moment, gaze still locked there when she responded.

“When is it to be held? I’ll need time to think on it.” Perhaps there was a way for her to go and be there for Aurora, as she wished for her to be, without compromising Aurora’s seat on the throne. She could loiter in the back, or come in late. She glanced past the blonde next to her and at Diaval, sitting on a mossy boulder next to the bench. Perhaps she could attend as a raven.

Aurora withdrew her hands, letting Maleficent allow hers to fall back to her lap. “The summer solstice.”

Soon. Very soon—possibly too soon—and there was anxiety deeper than the worry over whether or not Maleficent would attend tied in with the way Aurora delivered those words. She’d folded her hands tightly together upon releasing Maleficent’s, and seemed about to start to wring her hands.

More, she was staring down at those hands like she couldn’t stand to turn her attention anywhere else.

“Aurora,” Maleficent prompted, and leaned forward, one hand outstretched but not touching.

The young queen looked up, a small smile forced into the corners of her lips.

“I am not certain it’s wise, but I’ll attend in some capacity,” Maleficent promised.

Aurora’s eyes grew bright and watery at that, but her smile broadened and a soft breath, like a sigh, escaped her lips, bringing her shoulders down as though the air had been stress holding them tight and raised.

“Thank you,” Aurora whispered.

Maleficent’s heart hurt at the tones painted in her voice. She heard relief there, yes, but also fear and so much exhaustion, like everything inside of her that had been bolstering her defences had fled and collapsed when Maleficent had agreed to come to the coronation. _Anything_ , she wanted to say but couldn’t, _I would do anything for you._

She had at least come to terms with that a long time ago.

“How long do you have before you have to return?” Maleficent asked. She twitched her fingers as Aurora leaned back into the bench, and the roots slid around, re-braiding themselves together behind her back to create a seat that embraced her. Aurora gave her a grateful smile.

“Only overnight,” she said. She tilted her head back, propping her neck on the back of the bench and flipping her hair so that it trailed along behind it, golden strands bright against brown and deep green. “Oh, I wish I could stay here forever. It’s so quiet, and there’s no one to tell me I shouldn’t sit this way or that.

She stretched her arms out behind and above her head, illustrating that point for a moment before she brought her hands back into her lap and sat back up. Her shoulders remained curled and slouched, though she was studying the pool in front of them with an interested eye.

“Quiet until the wallerbogs really get going,” Maleficent said dryly.

“It’s a different sort of noise from people making demands on you all day. Far more relaxing”

“But you’re the queen,” Maleficent said. “Is a moment or two alone so hard to come by?” 

Aurora tilted her head. “You’re frowning,” she observed. Maleficent smoothed out her features and raised her chin. Aurora’s shoulders lifted in quiet laughter. “Humans are a great deal more complicated than faeries. And the more important they decide you are, the more complicated things become.” 

 _Complicated_ were they? Maleficent wasn’t so sure she agreed, but Aurora was tired and arguing the point wouldn’t be of any good to either of them.

“You’re welcome here any time you need a rest, you know that.”

“I know, Godmother,” Aurora said. Then she yawned, hand covering her mouth and looking like she was trying and failing to control the motion. “You know,” she said when she recovered, “You once said I could live here, with you." 

“I remember,” Maleficent said. “But things changed that very day.”

Aurora sighed, casting her gaze to the horizon where the sun only peeked a fraction over the leafy canopy in the distance. Her fingers fussed with her belt, smoothing it and tugging at the tight little embroidered stitches, and then repeating.

“You are good for the kingdom,” Maleficent said. “You are caring, and intelligent, and you will do well.” She paused while Aurora looked back over at her. “And the Moors are honoured to count you as the first human monarch they have recognized." 

Her cheeks pink, Aurora ducked her head. “I wish I were as good with words as you.”

“You will learn,” Maleficent said, and rose. “Come. You’re tired and it’s growing late. Rest, and we can talk more tomorrow before you return home.”

  

Soon Aurora was sound asleep, safety cradled in the low, thick branches of Maleficent’s elder tree. The faerie herself stood next to it, watching the lights sparkle in the darkness below the cliff as fae folk flitted here and there. Diaval, still human, posed at her side.

“Come,” she said, casting one last glance across Aurora to ensure she wasn’t going to fall from the tree, before she turned and walked down and out of any range where talk might wake the queen.

“Did you know of this?” she asked. “Of Aurora’s not ruling?”

“She’s ruling,” Diaval said. “They listen to her. She just gets a lot of advice.”

Maleficent hummed, not as confident in that answer as he was.  “And this coronation?” 

“A formality, like Aurora said.”

Maleficent didn’t understand human monarchy well, and perhaps Aurora was correct when she said humans were so much more complicated than faeries were. The Moors had performed their coronation for Aurora shortly after Stefan’s death, part of their celebration of the rejuvenation of the lands and of Maleficent’s renouncing the crown she’d forcefully taken.

Perhaps she simply hadn’t thought of it. Hadn’t thought of how much more seriously the world of iron took their kings and queens and hierarchies. But for Aurora not to have mentioned it for _three years—_ that seemed excessive, almost like she was hiding something.

Maleficent waved her hand, calling her staff into it in a bright burst of gold magic.

“Where are you going?” Diaval asked as she unfurled her wings.

“Up to the castle. Stay here and watch Aurora.”

He glared at her. “You’re not thinking,” he said. “You can’t go up there, especially with her away and no one to vouch for you, and in the middle of the night.”

She clenched her hand around the staff and the orb on the end flared with light, but she folded her wings back again in defeat. He was right. She didn’t travel out of the Moors, and to do so now would be… well, more harm could come of it than good.

“You’re right, you know,” Diaval continued. “She’s going to do well.”

“Of course she is,” Maleficent said, words coming out as more of a snap than the neutral tone she’d been going for. One thing Maleficent did understand about humans was their overall ruthlessness. It was a trait Aurora lacked, and one that would be a danger to her should those under her decide she _wasn’t_ doing well. Aurora would do well, because she was good and pure, but also because she had no other choice. 

Briefly, Maleficent wondered if the young queen had figured that out for herself yet or not.

 

The wallerbogs bellowed their happiness to anyone in earshot the next morning beating out even the cicadas for volume as the day grew hot and humid before noon. The solstice hadn’t passed yet, but it was soon and the weather had already risen to the occasion of celebrating summer.

Aurora stood in a shallow, rocky pool with her dress soaked to the middle of her shin. Air pockets bloated bits of it up and the rest dragged around her. The sun may have been warm, but the water at least was spring fed and would remain cool into the highest heat of the summer.

Maleficent and Diaval were being allowed no such relief from the early heat, though they had taken refuge from the sun beneath the vast, leafy branches of an old oak. Any time Diaval tried to dart toward the water, Aurora splashed him and chased him off again.

“I promise it’s not difficult,” Aurora said, her hands on her hips and shoulders squared.  

"I won't even be attending as a man," Diaval protested. "Why should I have to learn to dance?"

Maleficent nudged him forward, out of the shade and onto the flat bit of grassy space that Aurora had dubbed their lesson space for the sake of trying to teach herself and Diaval one of the popular court dances. "Aurora needs someone to practice with."

Diaval scowled at her over his shoulder. "And you're not someone?" he asked.

Maleficent raised her eyebrows at him, but was stopped from speaking when Aurora called, "Her turn will come." Maleficent frowned at her and leaned back, wings providing a cushion between her back and the rough bark of the oak.

Aurora stepped up onto the riverbank. "Besides, if I teach you the men's steps, you can practice with Godmother when I teach her the ladies'." Diaval wore a comic, exaggerated expression of distress when Aurora took one of his hands in hers.

“Now,” Aurora said, ignoring the expression. “For this one, you start with hands together, like so, and then take two steps forward, together.”

She guided Diaval through the steps, her own motions mostly the same as those she instructed him to take, but differing with a curtsey here, or when she instructed Diaval to twirl her. Maleficent watched the lesson with a vague feeling of amusement, mixed in with hope that Aurora would take long enough instructing Diaval that she would need to return to her castle before she could turn her attention to Maleficent.

It wasn’t to be, it seemed.

“It’s your turn, Godmother,” came the dreaded words, and Maleficent drew in a great breath and let it out through her nose as she stepped forward. Diaval was flushed; he and Aurora had increased their steps once he’d learned the dance to be impossibly fast, until they’re nearly both tipped over into the river.

With a hand raised across her brow to shield herself from the brightness of the sun, Maleficent stepped from the shade. The sun blazoned across her, making everything warmer, and Maleficent puffed her wings out and back, away from her body. It made things a little cooler for her, at least.

“I’m sure I’ve picked up enough from watching to fake it, should I have to dance,” Maleficent said, one last protest as she approached Aurora, who had her hands held out for Maleficent to take.

“Then let’s test that,” Aurora said. She wore a cheeky little grin. Maleficent sighed, but let Aurora take her hand. Somewhere off to her right, Diaval snickered.

“Now, take two steps forward,” Aurora said, and skipped the first one to match Maleficent’s longer stride before she managed to adjust for the second one. “And then match…”

They turned, pivoting on opposite feet to face each other and met free hands together. There were two kicks here—Maleficent’s foot brushed Aurora’s.

“Right first, that way we’re opposite,” Aurora corrected.

Feeling _ridiculous_ Maleficent tried again, kicking her right foot and then her left forward and brushing in front of the other leg so that the bottoms of her robe and Aurora’s skirts hit. “Is this really what humans do for fun? I’m convinced you’re having me on.”

Aurora tutted. “Aren’t you having fun?” she asked as she guided Maleficent to release her hand and turn back the way they’d been facing.

They took two more steps before they were facing again, and Maleficent managed her kicks in the proper order this time.

“I think you’re having more fun at my expense than with the dancing,” she replied.

Aurora shook her head, looking fond but exasperated. “It makes more sense with the music.”

Maleficent gave her a doubtful look, and allowed Aurora to guide her through two more repeats of the same motions, until they were at the edge of where their patch of glass would allow.

“At the end of the hall, you’d curtsey to your partner, and he would bow, and then you turn—“ Aurora illustrated this with a pivot to her left “—to match with a new partner, from the row dancing beside you.”

“And then you do it again,” Maleficent said.

“Well, yes.” Aurora turned back to her. “There are more steps though, for when the music really gets going. This is just simple.”

She was starting to look crestfallen, and it dawned on Maleficent that the purpose of this visit, in Aurora’s mind, was more than just to get rest and to deliver the coronation invitation personally. She’d been planning this lesson, and Maleficent’s utter lack of excitement for it disappointed her.

“Alright,” she said, warmth to her voice that hadn’t been there before. “Show me.”

Aurora smiled again, and if it was a bit unsure, well, Maleficent could fix that.

The queen raised her hand and waved Diaval over. “Pretend you’re finishing and will be Godmother’s next partner,” she said, and joined her hands up with Maleficent’s again, as though they’d just arrived at the edge.

“Now, turn,” Aurora said. 

Maleficent stepped away and froze midway through the motion. A tickle of fingers brushed across her left wing and she hissed, pulling it forward with a snap and around her, away from the offending contact, and stumbling a couple of steps away. Her gait was off, with her wings tucked forward, and her breath came in quick spurts and she couldn’t quite stand up straight.

She met Diaval’s shocked face with wide eyes, which shifted to shame. She looked away and focused on calming her breathing, not turning back to look at Aurora. Gradually, her wings uncurled from around her and settled back behind her, both still tense but drooping with her mood, primary flight feathers spread and brushing the ground. Hands clenched and nails biting into her palms, Maleficent forced her arms down to her sides in time with her carefully controlled breaths.

"I think that's enough dance lessons for today," she said, forcing her voice to be hard so it didn't shake. "See Aurora safely back to the castle," she ordered Diaval, who was wearing a disappointed look that she didn't want to read too far into.

She launched herself into the sky with two great sweeps of her wings, their strength fanning the hot air around as she torpedoed upward, reassuring herself that nothing had happened. No harm had come to her, and she'd overreacted, and Aurora would never mean her any harm.

"Maleficent!" Aurora shouted below her, voice already almost lost to distance and the winds. Another great stroke and Maleficent caught an updraft that swept her entirely out of earshot. She could add running away to the list of embarrassments for the day.


	2. Chapter 2

"Godmother!" Aurora shrieked to the billowing robes that the wind swirled around the escaping faerie's form. "Maleficent!" 

If Maleficent heard her, though, she ignored the call, growing smaller as she pushed herself up into the clouds and farther and farther away from Aurora.

She looked down at her hand, fingers still outstretched: first from dancing, then from standing behind Maleficent, trying to reach out and comfort her and knowing she wasn't going to take any of it. She clasped the fingers of her other hand over the offending digits and squeezed.

"It was an accident," she said, casting a look over at Diaval. She'd underestimated the space between them, hadn't even thought about how different dancing with wings must be, or how much space needed to be accounted for to keep from brushing against them. The tips of her fingers had barely come into contact with the feathers—enough that she knew now how soft they were, not enough that she would have ever thought Maleficent could have felt it.

But she had (and of course her wings would be sensitive!), and now they were here.

"She knows that," Diaval said. He had his arms crossed and a displeased, maybe even disgusted, look on his face and he kept shooting glances upward, though Maleficent was long out of sight. "Does she really expect me to _walk_ you all the way back to the castle?"

Aurora smiled at him, a little bit of a laugh bubbling from her lips. "Is that what you're upset about?"

"She forgot to change me back before she took off in a huff," he pointed out. "She forgets I'm a bird when it's not useful to her."

Aurora put her hands on her hips. "That's not true," she said. "She knows just who you are." She bit her lip and, chewing on the corner of it, looked up at the sky again, hoping Maleficent might be returning.

But the sky was clear, of clouds and of broad-winged faeries, and the sun’s height suggested it was getting too late to wait around for Maleficent to return.

The hem of her dress was still damp from wading in the river, but a couple of shakes and slaps of her hand got rid of the worst of the dirt from dragging it through dust while dancing. When she looked around for her stockings and riding boots, abandoned the night before and forgotten about until this moment—everyone went barefoot in the Moors, where the grass was soft and forgiving and shoes impeded your ability to feel it—a few water faeries glided, just above the surface of the water, with them in hand.

“Why, thank you!” Aurora said, and gave three bobbing, half-curtseys—one to each of them.

The garments, of course, were damp too, though them from being handled by faeries. She sat on the grass and yanked them on anyway, hiking her skirts up so she could pull the stockings on all the way. Her etiquette teacher’s voice shouted in her head, berating her for the unladylike baring of her legs to anyone who cared to look. Not that there was anyone around but Diaval.

Her boots came next, the heat intensifying and focusing more and more around her ankles and shins as she laced them up.

“I suppose I have to return now,” she said and sighed, legs bent to form a diamond and skirts pulled across it, her hands lying idle between them. Unable to help it, she glanced up at the sky again.

“Western borders,” Diaval said. “That’s where she’s gone.”

Aurora wrinkled her nose and got to her feet. “That seems awfully far. How do you know?” Her own kingdom, and the human half of the realm starting to become known as the Enchanted Dominion, lay to the east. The Kingdom of the Dawn, it was called by itself.

Diaval shrugged. “That’s the way she flew,” he said, and glanced away from meeting her eyes.

Aurora turned and started leading the way from their dance lesson space and back toward where they’d left Aracelis when she’d dismounted the prior evening. “What are you hiding from me, Pretty Bird?” she asked. She looked over at him, and Diaval cringed, the raised bits of bird skin on his temples appearing to stand up higher than usual.

"I'm not hiding anything," he said, sounding belligerent. 

“I think you are,” Aurora said in singsong. Maleficent had secrets, she knew that, and Diaval, as her confidante, kept those secrets closely guarded. 

“There’ve been rumours. But they’re just rumours.”

Rumours? She didn’t think faeries were the gossiping type. Or perhaps they were exactly the gossiping type, if the carefree chattering of the water faeries was anything to go by. Aurora didn’t speak their language, but Maleficent often seemed to grow quickly bored, and irritated, by what she heard.

Diaval didn’t elaborate. Not even when Aurora made funny faces at him, finally ending with an exaggerated frown.

“You’re worried about them, though.”

“Maleficent’s worried,” he said, sounding like he was clarifying the point. Aurora tilted her head and he sighed. “You’d have to talk to her about it.”

Well, if that wasn’t far easier said than done. 

They reached Aracelis, not moved very far at all from where Maleficent had instructed her to stay the previous afternoon, and Diaval stood back while Aurora fetched her saddle from the nearest low-hanging tree branch and got her into her tack.

“I gather you’re not coming with me,” she said.

Diaval snorted. “I’ll watch ‘til I can’t see you anymore. That’ll be good enough.”

Aurora smiled, and reached her hands out to him, hugging him when he got close enough for her to wrap her arms around his shoulders. Ever estranged from human forms of affection, he clasped his arms around her quickly before backing away.

“Take care, Aurora.”

She mounted, and glanced around from her seat atop Aracelis, hoping that Maleficent might’ve decided to see her off after all. But no such luck. “And you, Diaval. And… make sure Godmother knows how truly, dreadfully sorry I am.”

Diaval rolled his eyes, looking annoyed again, but he nodded in deference. “I’ll make sure she does.”

Aurora smiled her thanks and tapped Aracelis’ sides with her heels, urging the mare into motion. “Good bye, then,” she said, and gave a little wave. Diaval returned it.

 

As she always did, Aurora missed the Moors as soon as she left them. Nothing in the human, ordinary part of her kingdom ever felt quite so alive as the magical faerie lands. Without the twinkling of tiny elementals floating through the trees, or the noise of the wallerbogs, the land was quiet. So painfully quiet that it felt dead.

She supposed it had its own peace. Here in the fields, with the castle on its crag and standing higher than anything else around, overlooking the whole kingdom, Aurora could think. 

A swarm of swallows darted by overhead and Aurora smiled, tilting her head back to watch them flock past. It was different than the Moors, here, but not in a bad way. She wished she could get Maleficent to see that, to encourage her to leave the boundaries of the Moors more—perhaps even to visit Aurora at the castle.

But then, if she couldn’t even stand for someone to brush against her wing, perhaps Maleficent was safer keeping to the Moors, and to herself, as she did. Aurora would never have thought that Maleficent would be so touchy, so sensitive, and react so poorly, all this time later.

She’d asked to touch Maleficent’s wings once. Just once. It had been shortly after she’d gotten them back, and Maleficent had been glowing with pride when Aurora rode in to visit that day.

“Look at them,” she’d said, and that even now was unusual in itself, because Maleficent might have been proud of her wings but she tried not to draw anymore attention to them than they drew on their own. But that morning, she’d drawn Aurora’s eye to them, and given them a great flex.

How they had sparkled. 

No one had cared for Maleficent’s wings when they had been a trophy in a glass case, locked in some far out-of-the-way tower of the castle. Though still magnificent, they’d been dusty and grey, drab in colour. It should have dawned on Aurora that of course they were dulled down by dust and neglect, but until that moment the thought hadn’t crossed her mind.

They were soft brown. Rich and warm and with so many different specks of colour scattered within them, Aurora didn’t think she could ever name them all. When Maleficent moved, flexing them to show off their power, they caught the sun and their opalescence increased.

“They’re beautiful,” Aurora breathed.

Maleficent looked away quickly, and Aurora thought her cheeks might’ve been pink when she finally looked back up, had she been human. 

She clasped her skirt with her hands to stop herself from reaching out, because they looked so soft now that they were clean and she wanted to know what it would feel like to bury her fingers in them.

“Godmother, may I touch them?” she asked.

Maleficent’s demeanour had shifted between one blink and the next. Her wings, held so wide and open a moment before, arched up and rounded to curve and ensconce her shoulders, wing horns tilted forward, toward Aurora, when they usually faced skyward.

Her whole body held still and shoulders hunched, Maleficent’s gaze on Aurora turned wary, her eyes wide, green and unblinking.

“I—Yes, Beastie, of course,” she said. 

Aurora had replayed the scene in her head a thousand times, and she suspected hindsight had her memory inventing the tremble to Maleficent’s voice when she’d given her permission. And if not, Aurora had been too caught up in the moment, in the happiness that washed through her at getting to touch the faerie’s great wings, that she hadn’t noticed.

She nearly dashed forward, only Diaval’s raven warble warning her to still her steps and slow down. Maleficent didn’t move at all, neither to make it easier for Aurora to reach out nor to pull away. Those careful green eyes still watched her, pupils flickering to the slightest change in movement, down to the lifting of the ends of her hair when a gentle breeze blew past.

Aurora had paused, close to Maleficent and with her arm outstretched and looking in her eyes for permission to move those last couple of inches. She hadn’t found it. Maleficent looked, well, afraid summed it up nicely.

A trio of lavender water faeries had chosen that moment to flit on by, and Aurora allowed herself to become distracted by them. She dropped her hand to her side and darted off, leaving Maleficent alone to collect herself. An easy break to a situation that had ended up painfully awkward. 

She and Maleficent had never spoken of the incident, and Aurora had never asked again, not wanting to see that tension in her Godmother again, but also not wanting to hear ‘ _no_.’ She doubted it was coincidence that the faerie had never again drawn such attention to her wings, either. Aurora had scared her and never apologized for it, and here she’d gone and done it again. 

She would be more careful in the future. Perhaps faeries weren’t meant to dance.

 

Aurora had barely dismounted from Aracelis before her matron grabbed her and bustled her off into the castle. Mathilde was a gruff old woman who had served the queen, Aurora’s mother, before her death. When Aurora had come to the castle at not-quite-yet-16, she’d been bundled into her care.

It was through the servants’ back corridors that Mathilde led her, muttering all the while about the mud on her hem and the tangles in her hair. 

“…And stealing off like that, not a word to me! What were you _thinking_ , Highness?” Even scolding she was polite.

“I’ve told you, Mathilde, please call me Aurora.”

Mathilde paused long enough in her dragging Aurora through the halls to let go of her arm and dip a curtsey, before she started up again. “Begging your pardon, Highness, but your Highness has been told time and again that it wouldn’t be proper.”

Aurora rolled her eyes. They dared to wonder, with all their rules and their protocols, and their bowing and scraping and curtseying and _your Highnesses_ , why Aurora spent so much of her time—any moment she could get away!—in the Moors.

“Anyway, I sent William with a note to take to Lord Gregory, informing him of my brief absence.” Gregory was her Regent, the head of her Counsel and the man who made a lot of the day-to-day rulings on the running of the kingdom while Aurora was still learning. She would forever be learning at this rate, too, what with having to memorize all of the Houses everyone came from, and their lineage. 

Done intentionally, Aurora was sure, since she’d learned quite early on that all of _her_ lineage came from her mother’s side, with her mother’s father having been the king before Stefan, her father. Her father had no noble blood at all, as it turned out, and _that_ , according to all the laws she’d been forced to memorize, meant that Aurora had barely any claim to the throne at all.

Aurora, particularly tenacious and aware that she was the only one with any power who cared a whit that the Moors stayed untouched and as they were, had determined from that point that she _would_ rule. It became easier by the day. 

“Your Highness’s Regent Lord Gregory should not be bothered with such things directly,” Mathilde scolded.

Aurora still didn’t know the ways of Court. Her blue blood, though, bought her some leeway in breaking all the rules. Even those she broke deliberately.

“Next time I’ll be sure to inform you, Mathilde,” Aurora promised, holding her hand with her fingers crossed in her sleeve.

They’d reached the back entrance to Aurora’s bedchamber and Mathilde rushed her behind the changing screen. She practically had Aurora’s dirty dress stripped off over her head before they’d even stopped moving. Today’s dress, hanging on the screen, was pastel pink and beaded all through the bodice. The soft peachy-grey underdress that Mathilde forced over her head complimented the pink.

“ _Next time_ ,” Mathilde said, mildly thunderous, if a voice could be described in such a way. “Next time you will ride with armed guards or you shall not leave this castle alone. Princesses must _plan_ their outings; they can’t go romping across the countryside, alone, on a whim! Anything could have happened to your Highness!”

She sketched another curtsey after the explosion. 

“No harm will come to me in the Moors,” Aurora said.

Mathilde looked positively murderous, and pulled the pink dress down and thrust it at her in one fast motion. Aurora caught the dress against her chest, pulling it over her head when gestured to. Mathilde had disappeared from sight by the time Aurora resurfaced, the neck and arms of the overdress too loose and thus askew. 

Aurora’s younger maid, a girl of her own age called Primrose, trailed Mathilde with a large silver brush in hand when she came back around the screen.

“If your Highness would please sit, so I may brush through your Highness’s hair?” Primrose requested.

Aurora sighed and lowered herself onto the stool. She liked Primrose, she did, but she was timid and hardly could be called a friend. Aurora certainly couldn’t confide in her. Mathilde, too, was out of the question as confidante. She remembered too well the fear that the dark faerie’s reign had cast across the court. 

The only person she could confide in, she reflected as Mathilde tightened the laces of her dress and straightened it, and Primrose brushed fresh, floral scented oils through her hair, was Maleficent. Who she wasn’t even meant to be visiting. How lonely.

A banging came upon the door a moment before it flew open, crashing back against the tapestry-covered wall with a thump. Mathilde bristled and pushed on hand down on Aurora’s shoulder when she tried to rise. 

“Your Highness may be late, but—“ she lowered her voice at the clomping sound of a man’s boots coming toward the screen, accompanied by the rustling sound of chainmail swinging about his person “—that’s no permission granted to come charging into Your Highness’s bedchamber unannounced.”

Primrose continued pulling the brush through Aurora’s hair, softening it and counting quietly under her breath with the strokes. “ _Eighty-seven, eighty-eight…_ ” Mathilde nodded her satisfaction that Aurora’s preparation for the counsel meeting would continue, and then she spun, hands raised, and disappeared outside of the screen.

“Where is Her Royal Highness Princess Aurora?” It was Sir Frederick, knight and lord and her usual accompaniment when she went on outings to the low-lying villages throughout the kingdom. He served as her chaperone on visits to the gardens when Prince Phillip was in on a visit as well.

Aurora smiled. Frederick sounded angry, he probably was, but for all his formalities and blustering, he’d become a good friend to her in the years since she’d ascended to the throne.

“One doesn’t simply _barge_ into a Princess’s bedchamber!” Mathilde exclaimed. 

More jingling of chainmail, probably Frederick sketching out a bow. He was many, many ranks higher than Mathilde, but the matron had a way about her that ensured she had the respect of the courtiers. 

“Madam Mathilde, normally I would have waited to be announced but the princess is late for the counsel sitting by nearly two candlemarks and today is the King John and Prince Phillip of Ulstead are meant to arrive to begin preparations for the coronation.”

Aurora bit down on her lip. Primrose reached her hundredth brush stroke and began separating strands and twisting and braiding them. She’d forgotten Phillip would be coming today, and his father, who she’d met briefly less than a handful of times. 

“Her Royal Highness will be proceeding down to the chamber anon,” Mathilde said.

“Lord Gregory is furious,” Frederick said. Aurora thought he had turned, and might now be facing the screen directly. He certainly didn’t seem to be speaking with Mathilde any longer.

She chewed on the corner of her lip again, then fisted her hands and forced herself to stop. It wouldn’t do any good being nervous. She’d at least gotten the invitation to the coronation to Maleficent, and that was important. Whatever consequences came now, she could deal with them while being, well, maybe eighty-five percent certain that her Godmother would be present to see her truly become Queen of the Kingdom of the Dawn.

“Lord Gregory would do well to remember that he refuses to send any envoy to meet with the Protector of the Moors,” Aurora said, pitching her voice over the screen. She and Frederick had had this conversation before. He had never met Maleficent, and knew her only by the reputation she had amongst the kingdom so he didn’t particularly wish to meet her. 

“That doesn’t mean that you need to make an envoy of yourself, Aurora,” he said. 

Mathilde made a furious noise at the use of her given name, but Aurora smiled. Frederick, at least, respected her desire to not be _Your Highness_ ’d all the time. 

“Maleficent is—“

“She is _not_ dangerous,” Aurora snapped overtop of what he’d been about to say. 

He didn’t argue. There wasn’t any time for it, if she was already as late as he said, and besides that, he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere with her.

“There you are, Princess,” Primrose said, and settled Aurora’s coronet on her brow. 

The circle of gold was heavy, despite being made of finely worked bits. They called it the weight of ruling, as though a ruler needed something heavy atop their head to remind them of all of the issues of the kingdom weighing down on their shoulders and conscience.

“Thank you,” she said, and rose. She shoved her feet into the flat, pointed-toe shoes she wore in court and at counsel. Primrose ducked to fasten the buckles but Aurora waved her out of the way and stomped around the screen, shoes barely clinging to her stocking feet. 

“Princess,” Frederick greeted, and bowed down on one knee. Aurora folded her arms over her chest with half a mind to leave him there until they went downstairs, and see how big the bruise on his knee got.

“That’s fine, Sir Frederick,” she said instead. He straightened and looked her over, a smirk at the edge of his lips when Primrose darted around to fasten the buckles of her shoes. Aurora waited until she’d finished and curtseyed out of the way before acknowledging that Frederick had put out one arm for her to take.

Mail hung out around his forearm, overtop the protective padding and covered mostly by his livery tunic. Aurora ran one finger across it before resting her hand and letting him lead her from the room.

“This is iron,” she said. 

He looked at her askance, dark eyes narrowing. “It is,” he said. “All armour is iron.”

Aurora nodded. That would be a problem, one she was going to have to delicately bring up and manoeuvre around for Maleficent’s sake. Frederick sighed, abruptly stopping and grasping her hand in his large dark one to tug her into an alcove off the main hall, practically behind a tapestry.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. “Best get it off your chest before you go in front of your counsel.”

Frederick’s father held a seat on said counsel, and was grooming Frederick to take over when he ceded it. No doubt he heard everything and anything that Aurora brought up in sessions—particularly if no one else agreed with her. 

“It’s nothing,” she said. Nothing she could give voice to until she was absolutely sure she was going to win, anyway. She thought Frederick would be on her side if he sat in session, but he didn’t, so that was moot.

“Aurora.”

“Truly. Nothing. Aren’t I late?”

He frowned, and deeply, but Frederick had been brought up in court and taught that he had to respect the right of people above him to dissemble their words and thoughts. She oughtn’t take advantage of it if she wanted to keep him as a friend, but Aurora had been protective of Maleficent since she’d realized how poorly looked upon the faerie was. Worse than the faerie realm itself, it seemed, and no doubt because Maleficent was the strongest of them as much as because of the curse she’d placed upon Aurora when she was an infant.

Aurora had forgiven her. Her kingdom needed to as well.

Frederick entered first when they reached the Counsel Chamber, a long dim room with a big heavy table in the middle of it and a chair for Aurora that she felt tiny and swallowed up in. She preferred the queen’s throne of court in the main audience chamber. Built at least for a woman, she didn’t feel quite so dwarfed by it all of the time.

“Her Royal Highness, the Princess Aurora,” Frederick announced, and bowed himself out of the room as Aurora entered.

She was greeted by an enormous flurry of movement a she stepped across the threshold, and a group of faces—eight, all men, and all at least double her age—standing and wearing varying expressions of anger, and annoyance, at her tardiness. Gregory, at his seat to the right of hers, didn’t bother hiding the fury in his expression. 

None of her counsel had ever apologized when they were tardy, so Aurora bit down the apology and explanation on her tongue and made her way to her seat at the far end of the room, keeping her step a careful glide. She pictured Maleficent in her head as she did it, that regal pose, and walked like she had horns on her head (never mind her crown) held high and noble. 

She sat, and her counsel sat after her.

Her chair was warm. Warmer than it should have been. Aurora didn’t comment. Not even when Gregory slid his wine goblet across the table and closer to him with a muttered apology.

Aurora looked around the table carefully while a serving girl dashed forward with a fresh goblet and filled it with watered down wine, leaving the cup by her elbow and bowing away quickly. The counsellors met her eyes with varying degrees of shiftiness, each glancing away deferentially when her gaze fell upon them. Some wore more guilt than others. 

"How was your trip to the Moors, Highness?" Gregory asked. He said her title stiffly, as he always did, like it was a strain to remember to use it. But he had never called her Aurora, despite her invitation for him to.

Maleficent flying away from her flashed in Aurora's memory. "Very well. Thank you, Gregory." 

Lord Cunningham, Frederick's father, leaned forward. "You've followed through on your intent to invite the dark faerie, then, Highness?" he asked. 

Aurora bit down on the inside of her lip. Of all of the members of her counsel, she liked and trusted Athol Cunningham most. He had her wellbeing in mind, but he didn't like her association with the Moors, and he was outspoken about it.

"The Protector of the Moors will be in attendance, yes," Aurora said. Then hedged, "I would like to discuss—"

"That _harpy_ is not to attend!" Gregory barked. 

Lord Martin Whiteflower, across the table from him, flinched at the outburst. A tiny motion, but he was sitting to Aurora's left and it was hard to miss. She spared him a glance, but the Lord Chancellor’s white-whiskered features were unreadable.

" _Maleficent_ is the Protector of the Moors, a responsibility giving her jurisdiction over an area which covers a great deal of the Enchanted Dominion. Insisting that she will not attend, and refusing to even extend to her an invitation, is offensive to her as well as to myself," Aurora said. She had her hands flat on the table and was leaning over them toward Gregory by the time she was through. She didn’t shout but she also didn’t keep her tone as neutral as it could have been.

“Princess Aurora,” Cunningham said, pitching his voice down the table. “If I might,” and his voice was careful, “How can you be sure she won’t use her invitation into the castle as a way of usurping power?”

“She isn’t a night creature, needing an invitation to journey into a dwelling,” Aurora said. “Maleficent wants nothing of ruling, and nothing of human politics. You’ll hardly know she’s there, I promise.”

“I doubt that,” muttered Lord Wellersley, further down the table. 

“We’ll increase security, for your sake, Highness, as well as King John and Prince Phillip. I think… perhaps another twenty on patrol, and more men standing guard throughout the halls. It’s too late to tell Ulstead to increase it’s company, but we can make do protecting them,” Whiteflower said.

“Strike that from the record,” Aurora ordered. More iron. Out of the question. The scratching of quill on parchment paused.

“Highness?” Wellersley, in charge of the minutes, prompted.

“I don’t want a higher guard presence. This is a party, not a war. Let all but the bare minimum celebrate with their families.” The less iron there was around Maleficent, after the last time she’d been in the castle, the better. 

“That’s very kind of you,” Whiteflower said, “But we, as hosts, are responsible for John and Phillip’s wellbeing. If anything were to happen, it would be an act of war.” He smiled at her. “And then your wedding would most certainly be called off. Surely that’s something you’d like to avoid.”

“Maleficent will do no harm,” Aurora said again. She didn’t add in that more guards would surely put her more on edge, and more likely to do harm. That would be in no one’s best interest. 

Gregory put his hand over hers. It was coarse, moist and large, and Aurora laid her own hand very flat against the table in an effort to sink away from the contact. “Highness, we know you mean well, but there are protocols to follow, cautions to be taken. If the woman means no harm than the extra guards will simply be unnecessary insurance.” He made a gesture to Wellersley. “As Whiteflower said.”

“Lord Regent,” Wellersley said in acknowledgement.

“You have your way, the invitation will not be revoked.” Gregory’s tone was probably meant to be reassuring. She felt insulted instead, and snatched her hand back.

“Very well,” she said. “For John and Phillip’s sake, then.”

How to make these men agree to accede to her wishes? Aurora felt like nothing more than a pretty little marionette during counsel meetings, her signature going onto documents that Gregory said it must. Oh, they bowed their heads and they let her speak, but her wishes were often overturned, and those granted either inconsequential or events Aurora had to make happen all on her own.

She didn’t think things would change when she was crowned queen. She wished she had the barest amount of political savvy, or charisma, that would help her make her case. Perhaps Maleficent would teach her her way with words.

Aurora sighed, paying close attention to the rest of the meeting as it happened, listening as Gregory decided her life for her—based, of course, on what her father had planned for her before he had died, or so the counsel claimed. A dead king’s wishes, according to the law, overruled a living princess’s ideas about her own life and kingdom.

But, damn them all; she _would_ make her counsel see that she could rule. She would take the little victories as they came until then.


	3. Chapter 3

Summer Solstice. Maleficent winged low through the Moors, the sun warm on her back and shining brightly off the obsidian of her horns. Every faerie she flew over, wallerbog, pixie or sprite, sparkled in gleeful reverie. The lot of them were already drunk off of elderflower water and magic, and celebrations had been in swing since the sun had risen in the early, early hours of the morning. 

Maleficent could do without the noise that Summer Solstice brought along with it, but escaping to the world of men and joining a celebration there didn’t sound any more peaceful than staying here and hiding in her tree. Much less than, in fact.

She gave a great flap of her wings and skimmed over the canopy of the forest that encircled the Moors, gaze on the distant castle. The coronation ceremony ought to be a solemn thing, at least until the party began afterward. She had promised her presence to Aurora and she would deliver on that promise, of course, and finally see her young queen become queen in more than the Moors. 

She touched down on the other side of the tree line and looked up to the skies. Diaval spiraled down to land on her staff a moment later and the Tree Warrior Balthazar emerged from the forest and nodded to her.

“You will watch the western borders until I return?” she asked. Fidgety, her fingers stroked across Diaval’s head and wings. He gave her a reproachful look when the tip of one of her nails caught a feather and pushed it out of alignment. She quickly shifted it back into place and ran her palm across his back.

Balthazar nodded and grunted a question in the slow, low language of the trees. 

She didn’t know if the rumours were true. “I hope they are not,” she replied. “But even on this day of celebration, especially perhaps, we must be on guard to protect those who are not on guard themselves.”

Balthazar moved like he might bow, and Maleficent held up a hand, her wings sinking and cool shame flowing through her. Older lived even than faeries, trees took a long time—much more than three years—to acknowledge and accept change. The Moors had changed so much on the surface, but it was just the obvious pain vanishing. The deeper healing had yet to happen fully, and it would take so much longer. 

Balthazar withdrew and faded back into the forest. Maleficent watched him go. The Moors were in good hands, and she wouldn’t be gone long, but all the same, Maleficent felt she oughtn’t be leaving at all. Promise or no promise, the winds weren’t blowing in a direction she liked.

Diaval gave a soft caw and she turned back toward the castle. He was right, of course, they were going to be late if she stood here any longer, and while that would be to her preference—the less time she spent amongst the courtiers, the better she would feel—she didn’t want to draw any more attention off of Aurora than necessary. Didn’t want to draw any more attention to _herself_ than necessary. It was Aurora’s day, after all.

Nervous, Maleficent fiddled with the golden ornaments on her wing horns for a long moment, shifting and aware she was putting off leaving. Fear she refused to give voice to sat tight like a pit in her stomach.

Diaval warbled. Maleficent spread her wings behind her and lifted from the ground, her motion slow and almost silent despite the great displacement of air as she rose. Diaval spiralled up next to her, head tilted and watching her out of the eye closest. She said nothing, instead pushing herself to an altitude where the wind rendered speech pointless. He followed, above her and away from the winds she created.

Even as high as she was, the guard presence around the castle was impossible to miss. Maleficent chose some distance down the road and landed in a glen, sheltered by trees from the sight of travellers making their slow way along the road. Using her staff as a walking stick, Maleficent made her way through the trees and up to the road and joined the peasant folk in their pilgrimage to the castle.

They shied away from her, with her great furled wings and tall curled horns, clumping together along the opposite side of the road when before they had been sparsely spread out. They travelled with spouses or families: mothers, fathers and older siblings alike with tiny children dangling from hands or around their necks. All hoping for a sight of the queen on her coronation day, a small glimpse of wealth and power to tell their friends about.

Maleficent thought for a moment about throwing herself back into the air and not landing again until she could touch down in the entry hall of the castle. Spooking the guards, though, was neither in her plan nor in her best interest. She would walk with the rabble, ignoring their gawking and their trembling as best she could, and with head held high.

Diaval couldn’t stay still. Landing on her staff, then shoulder, then flying circles around her one or twice before repeating. Finally, when he nearly hit her in the nose with a wing while flitting between perches, Maleficent flicked her fingers and changed his form.

“Finally,” he muttered, and pushed his fingers through his hair. “What’re you looking at?” he snapped at the nearest ogling woman. She gathered a boy of about five to her other side and looked away.

“Don’t bother with them,” Maleficent said. 

He gave her a long look. “Maybe you shouldn’t change me back when we get up there.” 

“You weren’t invited,” she said. Her gaze remained trained ahead of her, looking at the road and thinking only of arriving. They were nearly at the gates now, and the armour and halberds of the guards glinted in the afternoon sun. Feeling hot with the memory of iron scorching across her skin, Maleficent squared her shoulders.

“I could go as your… consort, yeah, instead of your pet bird.” 

She snapped her head over to look at him, and found him waggling his eyebrows, laughter in his eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

 

The compacted dirt road had been made dry and loose by drought and though their walk hadn’t been long, Maleficent could feel gritty dust clinging to the pinion feathers that dragged along behind her. How she loathed feeling as though she were being forced to walk, and again by humans. Even with the comfort of the wing weight on her back, anger and self-loathing rose through her. Shadows and memories of the real emotions, perhaps, but real enough and close enough to make her shoulders stiff and every motion tinged with rigid tension.

At the gate the guards had wary eyes behind the steel of their visors. Maleficent kept one hand clenched around her staff and the other hidden in the draping of her robe, down by her side. Too conflicted, she didn’t know what colour her magic would be if she used it now. At her approach, the nearest guard waved off the family dressed in nothing more than rags that stood in front of her.

Maleficent offered the rolled invitation Aurora had brought her before the guard could ask for it. He gave her a suspicious look but grabbed it from her fingertips, not noticing Maleficent’s snatching her hand out of the path of his steel-protected fingers when he did.

The man unrolled the parchment, glanced it over and grunted, then turned to a boy next to him. “Run for Sir Cunningham.”

The boy had barely turned, posed to sprint across the bridge and courtyard beyond, when another voice shouted, “No need!” Diaval, perched again on the ball of her staff, shifted. She touched her fingers to his back.

The man who joined them had a jovial face and his helmet held under his arm, leaving his head bare but for hair tied in tight rows against his scalp. “Mistress Maleficent,” he greeted. He held out a leather-gloved hand for her to take.

She gave the hand a sceptical look and he let it fall.

“My name is Frederick Cunningham. The princess asked me to escort you to the throne chamber where the ceremony will take place.” 

_Princess._ She wouldn’t pretend to understand human politics. If Aurora was all but queen why not refer to her as such? 

“I know where the throne is, Sir Cunningham,” she said.

He bowed his head. “I believe the princess has the best wishes of every one in mind. No offence is meant.”

She locked eyes with Diaval, trusting the time he’d spent observing Aurora and the comings and goings of the castle. He inclined his head, and Maleficent turned her attention back to Cunningham. 

“Very well.” 

He didn’t offer his hand again, but instead indicated that they walk abreast, even keeping enough distance between them to account for the curve of her wings. Had Aurora spoken with this man, or was he so observant as to make the shift himself? She studied him as they walked, but didn’t ask anything of him, and neither did he attempt to strike up a conversation.

The lack of talk between them was likely for the best. The corridors may not have been filled with labyrinthine iron spikes, but the high guard presence from the castle’s exterior continued inside. The men at the doorways and standing at attention with swords at their waists or poleaxes in hand felt no less of a threat than those spikes had, though less directed at her.

Glancing down a narrow corridor they passed and discovering that all of the spikes hadn’t yet been removed did nothing to help the tension in Maleficent’s shoulders.

By the time their long, wending walk brought them to the main doors of the throne chamber, her wings ached from holding them so still. In silence, Cunningham bowed to her and made a quick exit, back the way they had come. Maleficent watched him go in disinterest, then slid into the throne chamber.

Before her was a sea of horned headdresses and cascading veils in a hundred different colours. Snoods with pearls woven in caught and held hair at the bases of ladies’ necks and jewels hung around their throats. Those men that were present, the nobility and not those in armour standing guard, wore golden buckles on their shoes and hose bleached so white it would have looked pale next to snow.

Maleficent, in her unadorned, earth-toned robes, and only the slightest bit of ornamentation on her wing horns, found a place to stand against the back wall of the room, as far away from the nearest guards and their branding weapons as she could without journeying any further into the room.

Even here she garnered stares, and folk gesturing at her like they might be able to ward her off, or crossing themselves quickly with mouthed prayers. It was no more than she had expected. Diaval cawed at them from his perch on her staff.

“Don’t,” she murmured. He gave her a dirty look. 

Trumpets sounded from near the raised dais at the front of the room, and the buzz of dozens of conversations happening in tandem was drowned out, and then cut off entirely. As one, the room turned toward the door nearest Maleficent, and she shifted as well, curious. 

“May I present our honoured guests this evening, His Majesty King John of Ulstead, and his son, Crown Prince Phillip,” announced the voice of a man she couldn’t see. The trumpets started again, heralding as two men—and one familiar to her—began a steady walk across the open space in the centre of the room.

Phillip had grown tall and broad since Maleficent had last seen him, and was through the gangly stage human youths had. A prince and dressed as one, with a crown on his head and a stance he hadn’t had that day in the Moors when they’d celebrated Aurora’s awakening. 

Maleficent touched a finger to her lips, thoughtful. Ulstead, she supposed, was the nearest kingdom that bordered Aurora’s, and probably the friendliest to them. It made sense for Phillip to be present, certainly, but she would have thought only the prince would be sent, as representative of his father, rather than the reigning monarch being in attendance as well.

Curious creatures, humans.

A long line of counsellors was named after the monarchy of Ulstead, and Maleficent’s eyes nearly glazed over as they went past. She perked up, though, at the name ‘Cunningham’ being announced and an older man whom her earlier escort resembled walking in. A father, then, and perhaps a man who was considerate and gave good counsel in sessions with Aurora. 

Two names after Cunningham was the _Right Honourable Duke Thomas Gregory, Lord Regent_. Maleficent pressed a little closer to the walkway and stood a little higher. This was the man Aurora had revealed was ruling for her. _With_ her, she had said, but Gregory had an unpleasant expression on his face and a dark look in his eye, and worse, she thought she recognized him. 

Her dislike of him increased when he looked around the room as he walked, and met her eye. She raised an eyebrow. He almost matched it with his lip when he scowled. This man hadn’t wanted her here. 

For the first time, Maleficent was glad she had come. 

“Her Royal Highness, Princess Aurora.” Around her, people started moving at once, like a puppeteer had ordered them all to their knees, bowing for their monarch’s passing. Maleficent kept her feet. 

Aurora stepped through the doors, head held high and bare of ornamentation. Her long hair tumbled loose down her back, wisps surrounding her face. Her expression was serious, steady, and her eyes focused ahead of her. Her gown looked heavy, with puffed out shoulders and a wide skirt that flashed layers of petticoats under the hem when she stepped.

She glanced toward Maleficent as she passed and turned her head slightly, though she didn’t stop walking. Maleficent inclined her head a fraction in acknowledgement, and Diaval did the same. A smile touched the corner of Aurora’s mouth after that, and then Maleficent was watching her back with a careful eye as she made her careful way the rest of the way to the dais, where Gregory and the counsel stood waiting. 

They kneeled at her approach, then rose once she had ascended the stairs, and this was apparently the cue for the rest of the guests to return to their feet. Aurora, at a gesture from Gregory, bowed down and knelt by his feet. Her gown pooled around her and on the steps behind her. Maleficent grit her teeth and frowned. It would be ceremonial, symbolic, this kneeling of Aurora to her Regent. It didn’t look that way, though.

Maleficent held her staff firmly with one hand and worried at a seam in her robe with the other, anything to top from making a scene, even if it meant fidgeting. Gregory began orating, his words slow and formal, imparting privilege and power unto Aurora. His words met Maleficent’s ears like sap starting to drip slowly from a tree, just at the beginning of the melting season. 

Maleficent didn’t dare let her attention wander. Each word was like each drop of sap, accumulating and building together to create something more important. The sap became food. The words, something else.

Oh, she had no doubt they were traditional, but she heard where the gendered terms had had to be changed to crown a queen instead of a king, and if those words had been changed, then what else might have been? She heard Gregory denounce his position as Lord Regent, heard the counsellors around him swear their witness to the oath, and then heard him promise to continue to serve on the counsel, in the position by which he had always before served the monarchy.

At the end of it all, Gregory placed a heavy crown on Aurora’s head and she rose to her feet.

“I present to you, Her Majesty Queen Aurora of the Kingdom of the Dawn and its outlying lands of the Enchanted Dominion, the first of her name,” Gregory announced. 

The crowd bowed again, and Aurora seated herself in the grand carved throne in the centre of the dais. A gesture from Gregory and the counsellors began shuffling across the dais, and the crowd returned to its feet. 

One by one the men knelt before Aurora, and took her hand and laid their lips upon the back of it, each pausing long enough that Maleficent suspected a phrase or oath was being muttered. 

“Get a closer look,” she whispered, bending right down so that the words were said against Diaval’s head. He spread his wings and she nodded when he gave an askance glance, looking for confirmation.

If they were looking, no one would have missed the rapid beating of his wings that brought him up into the rafters, but most of the guests faced forward, attention on the happenings on the stage and not on what was occurring behind them. Those on the stage, though, they hadn’t missed Diaval’s ascent, and one or two heads tilted back briefly to watch before they remembered themselves. 

Gregory’s was one of them, and he stared across the chamber until he found her and their gazes locked. He wore a scowl. Maleficent matched it with the tiniest raising of the corner of her lips. Not a sneer but not quite a smile either. 

When the last counsellor had stepped away, King John stepped forward, rising from a chair he’d been seated in at the front of the crowd and off to the side. Aurora stood as well, and when John ascended to the dais, she held out her hands to meet him. 

“My dear Aurora, will you do me the honour of allowing me to make the announcement?” he asked, voice pitched to carry across the room. Aurora smiled, but from where she stood Maleficent didn’t see any true amusement in it. She looked strained, almost nervous, maybe. If she were closer, Maleficent might be better able to interpret Aurora’s pose.

She looked toward Diaval, perched on an unevenly laid stone about halfway up the wall near the dais, but he was just a shape in the dark. Antsy again, Maleficent returned to worrying at the seam in the robe.

“Of course.” Aurora’s voice didn’t have the training to carry as well as John’s and it was faint as far back as Maleficent stood. They would need to work on that, perhaps Aurora would accept her help.

Murmurs broke out through the crowd as King John stepped to the centre of the dais and faced them, Aurora by his side. They were excited, rapid, bursts of sound. None so close that Maleficent could make out any distinct words, but it seemed everyone in this room knew what John was about to say. Everyone but her, that was. 

Worry that some awful thing was about to befall Aurora piqued within Maleficent and her urge to rise to intercept whatever was about to happen was stilled only by the nature of the whispers she could hear. There was tension in the room but it wasn’t nervous, only excited and expectant. 

She kept her attention steady on the front of the room. Her thumbnail scraped at the curved haft of the staff.

John bent low enough to kiss Aurora’s hand, then waved to Phillip, sitting in the chair next to where he’d been. “May I present my son, Prince Phillip of Ulstead, to you, my peers in the court of the Kingdom of the Dawn.”

Phillip ascended to the dais and, after bowing to Aurora, stood on the other side of his father. John put a hand on Phillip’s shoulder, a fond expression on his round old, white-bearded face. Phillip looked vaguely embarrassed, as Maleficent supposed was his right as a son whose father had pulled him to the centre of attention.

“Gathered gentry, I am happy to announce the culmination of this slow, gradual build of the friendships of our two kingdoms. Today, we not only celebrate the coronation of the Queen Aurora.” John paused long enough to smile at the woman on his right. “We celebrate also the announcement of the intended joining of Ulstead and the Enchanted Dominion, with the engagement of my son, Prince Phillip, and your new queen.”

The crowd burst out cheering, a loud, raucous sound accompanied by great clapping and stomping. The sound startled Diaval from his perch, and he came spiralling back toward her after catching himself falling in midair with rapid wing beats. Maleficent was frozen.

_Engagement?_

The word repeated itself in her head, echoing around like it was bouncing off the walls of her skull, utterly uninhibited because all other thoughts had made their quick escape. How could Aurora… had she… could Maleficent have forgotten such an important detail? Surely it had been mentioned, somewhere in the ridiculous dancing terminology and Aurora’s patient lesson-giving. 

Diaval perched heavily on her shoulder. She bent to the side with the weight of his landing, barely aware of moving one leg to adjust her stance to accommodate. Otherwise she ignored him, still staring up at the dais, and at the counsellors who were now filing through and kissing Aurora’s hand in congratulations. The cheering went on, filtered through her ears as vague ringing. _Engaged?_

Sharp pain shot through the tip of one ear and Maleficent flinched and swatted, her hand meeting feathers. Diaval jumped to the head of her staff. She glared at him. He glared back, then tossed his head and opened his wings in a ‘look around’ gesture.

Sure enough, the room was starting to empty. People edged around her, aiming for the door and the ballrooms on the floors below the throne room, closer to the kitchens, where the celebrations would be taking place following the ceremony. 

Maleficent remained where she was, pulling her wings out of the way of anyone who might get curious, so that they were flush against her. Too stifling in this heat, but better against her and keeping her too warm than handled and feathers broken.

She didn’t want to be the last one left here, and yet…

“Did you know?” she murmured to Diaval. He tilted his head, and then gave it a small shake. She ran her fingernails through the feathers on his neck. Then she squared her shoulders and took slow, measured steps against the departing crowd and to the front of the room. She gave a disdainful raised eyebrow to those who didn’t try and disguise the wide berth they gave her. 

No one on the dais save for Aurora watched her approach outright. Aurora, though, wore a smile with the faintest hint of grimace in the tightness of her lips. 

Maleficent stopped walking just shy of the steps, at the edge of the thin carpet that ran down the centre of the room. She inclined her head, the slightest tilt of her horns to the three royals. 

“Mistress Maleficent,” Phillip said, sounding delighted. He bounced down the steps and extended a hand to her. Maleficent gave him a tight smile, but allowed him to take her hand and kiss the back of it. Phillip wasn’t a bad child, and three years ago they had even thought he might be able to lift her curse. 

“Father,” Phillip said, and turned to King John, “This is Mistress Maleficent. She looks after the Moors, the fey lands that make up the other half of the Enchanted Dominion and border Ulstead to the south. 

“Mistress Maleficent, my father, King John of Ulstead.”

Maleficent, far more interested in watching the reactions flitting across Aurora’s face that she wasn’t doing a good job of hiding, glanced at John long enough to acknowledge the introduction.

“I do know where the Moors are,” John assured his son. They held themselves the same way, though John looked more of an age to be Phillip’s grandfather. John turned to her, “It is a pleasure, Mistress.”

She gave him a tight smile. Then, “Aurora, may I have a moment?” she requested. Her hand had returned to stroking Diaval’s back, a bad, nervous tell that she perhaps needed to address. 

Aurora took a step forward, looking awkward in her heavy dress and crown. Phillip extended a hand to help her down the steps and Aurora accepted it with a gracious smile. “Excuse us,” she said. With a hopeful expression on her face, she tilted her head to gesture for Maleficent to follow her to one side of the room.

There was a fireplace there, though with the heat no fire was lit in the grate. The grey stone in the back of the firebox was blackened with decades, perhaps centuries of ash that no one had scrubbed away. Maleficent studied the scorched patterns.

“Congratulations are in order, I suppose,” she said delicately.

Aurora touched her arm. “Godmother?” she said, and she sounded timid in her prompting. 

Maleficent turned enough to look at her. “You’ve never mentioned,” she said. “It seems there’s a lot that happens within these walls that you no longer elect to discuss with me.” 

Aurora’s lips parted and then shut again, and her cheeks flushed. The crease in her brow and flashing in her eyes suggested it was more in anger than in embarrassment. “This is the first invitation to the castle you’ve accepted, in nearly three years.” 

True, of course.

“I didn’t think you’d come today,” Aurora said a moment later. “After… after…” she trailed off and shook her head. 

Maleficent touched Aurora’s shoulder, resting just the tips of her fingers on the puffed bit of dress so the silk fell under the weight. “I promised I would come, and I am here. I am proud of you, Aurora, though I don’t understand your human ceremonies.” 

Aurora smiled. “Thank you,” she said. 

“But,” Maleficent said, maybe a little too sharply. 

“It was on the invitation,” Aurora said, her words all running together. “I didn’t… I didn’t know how to say it but it was on the invitation, the announcement, and everyone else knew!”

The invitation. The pretty piece of coiled parchment still tucked on Maleficent’s person. She didn’t pull it out. Of course it wouldn’t have crossed Aurora’s mind that Maleficent had no use for human words on paper. She had been raised by pixies and still learned to read, after all.

Though the narrow-eyed look Aurora was starting to give her suggested she had figured it out. Sharp and intelligent, Aurora would make a good queen if her counsel allowed her to rule. Perhaps now that she was crowned, she would be given the chance for that wit to serve her kingdom well.

“I’m so—“

“Don’t apologise,” Maleficent said. “I am happy for you, Beastie. I have no desire to lay more weight on your shoulders. The Moors should be a place of relaxation and safety to you, not one where you need to continue to dwell on the stresses of ruling. Even if that means failing to mention that you’re… getting married.”

She’d calmed down enough to be able to say the words, at least, even if she still failed to understand how the arrangements could have been made without a whisper from Aurora. And talking to Aurora, as it always did, had loosened the strain in her shoulders, lack of tension letting her wings hang lower and more open. 

“I’m so happy you came,” Aurora said, and she beamed. “Both of you,” she assured Diaval, who generally looked annoyed and bored by the whole exchange. Maleficent supposed she’d be hearing about his views on her conduct later. She stayed silent and chose to simply give Aurora a smile to match her own. She couldn’t say, honestly, that she was happy to have come, but she’d been able to support Aurora, and Aurora was happy, and that was what mattered.


	4. Chapter 4

From the moment Aurora had walked into the throne chamber, heavy skirts swaying around her hips and dragging against the floor runner, people pressing in around her and barely held off by the guards in their armour who lined all the hallways, she’d wanted nothing more than to retreat from the spotlight and flee to her rooms. That feeling hadn’t gone away when she’d spotted Maleficent in the crowd, but it had certainly tapered off. 

Maleficent had confidence in who she was. She didn’t try and hide, and she certainly didn’t retreat from it. And more, she’d come at Aurora’s invitation, all the way up to the castle where she _must_ have known that it would be impossible to escape the presence of iron. 

Maleficent’s presence alone made Aurora feel more capable, like she could channel her Godmother’s gravitas and make it work for her. But only if she was present.

Possibly, she felt surer of herself when Maleficent was around because her counsel was so afraid of the faerie’s reputation, and her power. She knew that the men of her counsel hated her own associations with Maleficent. But she felt _safe_ with her, far safer than with anyone else in her life. Where she felt like a weak, powerless child with her counsel, Maleficent lifted her up and made her actually feel _capable._

And though Whiteflower and Gregory and Cunningham and the rest feared Maleficent’s temper, and her power, and perhaps rightfully so, Aurora was secure in the knowledge that Maleficent wouldn’t hurt her. Not now, at least, not after the curse had been broken.

Her counsel.

Aurora couldn’t see the dais from here, not tucked back near the wall as they were and Maleficent with her height and those gorgeous broad wings standing between her and the group of nobility she’d left there. No one had begun shouting at her yet, but that would be more to keep up appearances in public than because they respected that she had taken a few moments to speak with Maleficent.

Maleficent shifted and glanced the way Aurora was looking, and if gave Aurora the opportunity to take a quick headcount of the counsellors who remained. Cunningham hadn’t gone on to the celebrations yet, nor had King John or Phillip, nor Whiteflower. Gregory, though, where was Gregory? He wouldn’t leave without her.

“Majesty! You—“

Aurora had a moment to register Maleficent’s wings spreading before something buffeted her in the chest, solid and blunt. Aurora shrieked, her legs losing purchase on the ground beneath her and the sound felt ripped from her chest by the great force that hit against it. Rushing filled her ears, then pounding and pain and ringing in her head that cut off and drowned out whatever else Gregory said. Her vision was black, with white bursts of light flashing across it, and the back of her head ached.

She tried to kick her feet, to sit up, but something had bound her legs, wrapped and tangled around them and rendered her motionless. She was dimly aware that she’d fallen down and lay on her back, her head resting on the hard stone of the floor. 

Warm air blew across her face like a large, rushing gust of wind, and Aurora struggled to push herself up into a sitting position with her hands. Her vision went completely white at the rush of raising her head, and the spot she’d hit pounded. 

“She attacked the queen! The beast attacked the queen!”

Gregory.

Aurora blinked quickly, trying to clear her vision, until a tiny circle of sight finally cleared itself in the middle of the white blankness sitting like a screen across it. A figure garbed in chain and livery stood over her, her narrow window of vision showing her only the swaying of the sheet of mail hanging over the backs of his thighs. 

“Seize her!” Gregory shouted.

Maleficent. Maleficent had attacked her?

Aurora tried to push herself to her feet, but the abruptness of the motion blinded her again and kept her seated. A hand pressed against her back, just between her shoulder blades, and the sound of chain cascading and clicking against stone came from next to her. 

The crashing of a window breaking followed.

“Aurora?” She let out a long breath and relaxed where she had tensed up from the contact.

“Phillip?” 

Her vision cleared enough that she could look at him. His expression was worried and angry and he almost looked like checking in on her was the last thing he wanted to be doing.

“Your ladies are on their way. You’re unhurt?” he asked, already starting to rise.

Aurora flailed out a hand and grasped at him, missing his hand but managing to grab onto the tunic hanging over his mail. 

“Phillip,” she said again, and managed to get a quick look around the room. Whoever had been standing over her had moved, and the room was full of guards holding live steel. She couldn’t see Maleficent, but the guards were starting to arrange into rows and Gregory was issuing orders.

The window over the throne was broken. At least she’d figured out where Maleficent had gone.

“Don’t hurt her,” she said. Phillip stared at her. “It isn’t her fault. She didn’t… she didn’t mean to.” She continued struggling to get to her feet, tugging at the skirts that had wrapped around her legs like vines until they loosened enough that she could move them. She managed to stand a moment later, bracing herself on the arm Phillip held out to her while her vision cleared.

Primrose and Mathilde came running up beside them a moment later and Phillip bowed away. “I will see you for dancing, later,” he said. 

Mathilde planted herself in front of Aurora when she tried to chase after Phillip. Aurora stood on her toes, peering around her matron and out of the nearest window, like she might be able to see Maleficent swooping by through the bubbled, rough glass.

“You’ve become horribly wrinkled, Majesty,” Primrose said. She tugged at Aurora’s sleeves like she could use sheer force of will, never mind her hands, to pull the lines from the crumpled fabric. Aurora stood still and let them fuss over her, her head still pounding. 

“And you—oh!” A finger touched the tender spot at the back of Aurora’s skull and she cringed, pulling away with a wince. “The queen needs a chair!” Primrose called out.

“I don’t—“ Aurora tried to turn to face her maid, now behind her, but Mathilde held her in place. A guard ran up with a heavy chair in his arms and a moment later, Aurora was being forced to sit own in it.

“You struck your head, Majesty,” Primrose explained. She wrung her hands, looking worried. “And there’s blood in your hair.”

“Send for a physician,” Mathilde ordered. The guard who had brought the chair bowed before darting away. “And you, Primrose, run and get water and a cloth. We haven’t much time.”

Primrose dipped a curtsey and was gone, following the guard, before Aurora could stop her. 

With careful, exploring fingers, she inched along the back of her head until she reached the edge of the sore spot. It didn’t feel like there was anything in her hair, but when she brought her fingers back, red dotted them. She could sit here long enough for the physician to come, but eventually she would have to put in an appearance at the celebrations below. 

She supposed dancing might be out, injured as she was. The room did quite a good job of spinning all on its own if she moved her head too quickly, she didn’t need to help it along with the twirls of the court dances.

 

Sometime later, after the physician had seen to her and advised in no uncertain words that she ought to be retiring to her rooms for the night and not remaining on her feet, Aurora sat watching the dancing of the courtiers. Phillip stood next to her, as he had been since she had made her entrance. With the coronation night doubling as her engagement ball—which wasn’t, strictly speaking, supposed to happen according to the rules of the realm—it was expected that she and Phillip would share at least one dance tonight. Perhaps when her head ceased its throbbing, though it had been growing progressively worse rather than better.

Gregory hadn’t reappeared, and Aurora imagined that even now he lead an army marching against Maleficent. She clenched her fist in her skirts at the thought. Maleficent had been startled, no doubt, and if Aurora replayed the incident in her mind she could figure out almost the instant it had happened. 

She’d sought out Gregory with her eyes, and had only seen him in the moment he stopped. Behind Maleficent his approaching form had been invisible, hidden from view by her height and her wings, and Maleficent had clearly been as ignorant of his arrival as Aurora had.

He must’ve brushed against one of her wings. After the way Maleficent had reacted when Aurora had touched just the tip of one during their dance lessons, no doubt lay in her mind that that was what had occurred. And of course, Gregory wore rings on his fingers, and mail on his arms and chest. If the iron had touched her and she’d been burned on top of the shock of the contact…

Well, Aurora supposed she was lucky she only had a small head wound out of it. 

She hadn’t spoken to Phillip about it. She didn’t know how to broach the topic. Phillip knew Maleficent wasn’t dangerous. He had been in the heart of the Moors with her, had spent some time with Maleficent and even if he hadn’t seen her kindness like Aurora had, he must know that she meant no harm.

From a distance, though, Aurora worried it had appeared that Maleficent had attacked her, utterly unprovoked. 

The bump on the back of her head ached, but she avoided lifting a hand to rub at it by tightening her fingers in her skirts. She’d been late entering into the ballroom and that had attracted enough attention. She didn’t want anyone who hadn’t been present for it to know that she’d been injured. 

Where had Maleficent gone? Diaval had left with her, it seemed. At least, she hadn’t spotted the raven since the coronation ceremony. Aurora hoped they were all right, but worry that even now Maleficent was fighting against Aurora’s own guards sat tight in her stomach. 

Bracing herself against the dizziness and ready to brave whatever her body might throw at her, Aurora slowly rose to her feet. “Will you dance with me, Phillip?” she asked.

He held out a hand to her before she had even fully stood. “Something slow, perhaps,” he said. “We’ll pass by the quintet and have them play a different piece.”

The music the strings sung now had an accompanying dance of a rather quick step, and Aurora gave him a grateful smile for his foresight. Phillip lead her with careful steps toward the musicians, the dancers they passed by bowing and parting to allow the ease of their passing. Keeping her close against him, Phillip bent and whispered to the violinist sitting at the end, and he in turn gestured to his fellow musicians.

The tempo changed mid-piece, one long note sliding into another, and the dancers rearranged themselves into the formation of the slow, simple stepped dance that Aurora had been trying to teach Maleficent. As one, the dancers on the floor shifted into new positions, forming long lines of motion across the hall. Aurora and Phillip joined in at the end of the centre row.

Aurora couldn’t imagine there was a part of court life, of being queen, more enjoyable than dancing. The repeated steps and careful twirls kept her grounded and meditative. Her thoughts settled as she and Phillip stepped and turned across the room in time with the beat, one pair in a sea of many.

At the end of the row she turned away from Phillip to join the row behind her, doing a double take and nearly stumbling a misstep on the transition footing when it was Diaval’s hand that met hers in the partner change. Garbed in a black tunic chased with silver embroidery and dark grey cap with a small black feather in it, he didn’t look as out of place as she would have expected. Certainly, he managed to look far less out of place than Maleficent had.

She glanced around, a quick back and forth turn of her head, to see if she’d somehow missed Maleficent, but the faerie hadn’t returned.

“She’s all right,” Diaval said. “Your guard is seeking her out, but they won’t have any luck.”

They turned away from each other and when they stepped back he clasped his fingers around her hand instead of simply pressing his palm against hers. His fingernails scraped like talons. “You weren’t injured?”

Aurora shook her head. “Nothing serious. Is she…?” She hoped Maleficent hadn’t been too frightened by her encounter with Gregory, brief as it had been. 

Diaval grimaced. “Like reapplying the branding iron, far as she’s concerned.” Maleficent would never let the words pass her lips but her actions spoke loudly enough about how deep through her the trauma spread. Aurora wished she would, for once, acknowledge that she wasn’t made of stone. Maleficent had been such a great friend to her, but she could never tell if the faerie felt the same.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have invited her. It would have avoided this,” Aurora said, biting down on her lip.

Diaval gave her a stern look, sharp eyes flashing with anger for a moment. “We were happy to come,” he said. “You couldn’t have predicted this.”

She knew his words were true, that there was nothing she could have done to avoid Maleficent’s fleeing, and that it truthfully was hardly even her fault. Yet all the same, perhaps the Moors and all of the creatures who called them home, Maleficent included, were better off steering clear of the world of iron. Even if the fair folk’s land fell within her borders, Aurora knew it needed no governance. Perhaps they ought to leave well enough alone.

Diaval peered at her as they danced to the end of the row, and he didn’t release her hand at the end, instead steering her out of line. She let herself follow. 

His destination was an alcove, the entrance to which lay nearly hidden behind a poorly placed pillar. Here, they were out of sight of most of the dancers and merry-makers in the main hall beyond.

“Congratulations, Aurora,” he said, and bowed and kissed her hand. “Try not to let ruling take over all your time. The Moors miss you.”

She smiled at him, even though the motion pulled funny and made the bump on her head hurt. Her cheeks threatened to hurt, too, with how wide her grin was. “I won’t forget you, Pretty Bird,” she promised. She watched him fondly as he bowed again and took his leave, pressing against the wall and looking like nothing more than a shadow in his black garb.

Then he was gone, and Aurora slipped back into the main room before she could be missed. Currents as they were this evening, she didn’t need to risk putting anyone else on high alert.

 

The dancing carried on until a very, very early hour of the morning. Primrose accompanied her up to her rooms to retire to bed, Mathilde long since having been dismissed and the younger maid coming on in her place. Where Aurora felt only bone-deep exhaustion, Primrose’s cheeks were pink and her spirits high from taking part in the end of the festivities after being allowed a short rest.

At Aurora’s chambers she went in first, lighting the tapers along the walls with the candle she held. She guided Aurora to a chair and sat her down, and Aurora starting to nod off as soon as the comfort of the chair swallowed her into its embrace.

A shout and the banging of the door between the antechamber and her bedchamber startled Aurora back awake.

“Primrose?” she prompted, getting to her feet despite the pain that shot through them from dancing all night, and the spinning of the room when she stood too fast. 

Her maid’s eyes were wide, candlelight catching the whites and making them shine in the darkness. Beyond that, Aurora had a hard time making out her expression, but her quick departure of the room wouldn’t be for no reason. An animal, maybe, that had gotten in and startled her?

“You can’t go in there, Majesty. We should call a guard,” Primrose said. 

Aurora rubbed her hand across her face. Still dressed in her heavy coronation gown, she wanted nothing more than to shed the weight of all of the layers of clothing and lie down and sleep until sundown. Then she would rise and see if she couldn’t garner some update from her counsel as to whether or not they had located Maleficent.

“I don’t like being told I can’t go to sleep.”

Not the right thing to say. The increase in Primrose’s panic was palpable, but she planted herself in front of the door, even spreading her arms as though to hold Aurora back should she try and enter the room. 

"Please, Majesty, let me fetch a guard, and promise you won't enter the room until I've returned."

She'd been awake too long to have much energy to argue, and standing and trying to read Primrose's face in the darkness of the room was straining her eyes and causing her headache to worsen. With a sigh, she dropped herself back into the comfort of the armchair. "Make it Sir Cunningham, if you can find him," she said. At least Frederick would keep whatever happened to himself and she could trust him not to blow things out of proportion. Of course, he'd likely already found his way to bed, as she wished she could do.

Primrose dipped a curtsey and scrambled from the antechamber.

Aurora watched the closed bedchamber door through half-open eyes, her ears tuned for the sounds of anything falling over, or scurrying, from the next room. Nothing. No scratching, no sounds of movement, absolutely nothing to suggest that Primrose had actually seen something worth worrying about. But then, what had she seen?

Curiosity rising in her and worming through enough of the exhaustion to bring her eyes open again, Aurora rose from the chair and crept to the door with light steps. She pressed her ear right against the wood of the door and rested a hand on the pull. She hadn't made any promises to Primrose, had been (and was still) too tired to argue, but still she felt dim embarrassment and a little hint of shame that she hadn't been able to keep to herself until her maid returned.

If Primrose had been spooked by who Aurora suspected she had been, though, she wanted a chance to talk before her rooms became a circus.

The door swung in with no noise and little effort on Aurora's part, the hinges well oiled and maintained. She stood on the threshold of the open doorway for a long moment, trying to make out anything in the darkness of the bedchamber. Primrose had only managed to light two tapers, right near the door, before she had fled, but the oil lamp on the chest at the end of it, next to the maid's pallet, burned high, and the moon outside was bright and shining in the west window; a window with a familiar looming silhouette back lit within it, whose face and features were invisible in the shadows surrounding her, but whose horns were turned in such a way that suggested she faced Aurora in silence.

"Godmother?" 

Aurora didn't know what Maleficent heard in her voice, but her response came in the form of a long, drawn out expulsion of breath that wasn't quite a sigh. Aurora stepped toward her after glancing around the room for Diaval. Either he hadn't returned or Maleficent had already sent him away again but it at least appeared that they were alone. 

When Aurora had almost closed the distance between them, Maleficent turned away. The moonlight reflected bright off of her pale skin, illuminating the jutting cheekbones and narrow, narrow face. She looked sad, and Aurora’s hand twitched with the restraint of not reaching out and touching one sharp shoulder. 

Maleficent didn’t look at her, her gaze instead watching the emptiness beyond the window. Aurora’s rooms were in a tower, and while there was much to see during the day—sweeping landscapes, and from up here she could see all the way to the Moors—at night blackness blanketed the outside, even on nights like tonight when the moon was nearly full.

Very, very mindful of the wings that draped from the faerie’s back, Aurora drew right up alongside her. She was a great deal shorter than Maleficent, that feeling never so great as when she stood this close to her, and that left her no way to plant herself in the faerie’s line of vision.

No matter. She stared up at Maleficent’s chin until she finally looked down and met Aurora’s gaze, her expression impassive.

“Are you hurt?” Aurora asked. 

Maleficent looked surprised, almost shaken by the question. “I am fine,” she said, sounding detached from the statement. She raised one slow, slow hand though, and two sharp nails traced against Aurora’s cheek.

“I’m alright,” Aurora assured her. 

“I should like to break this habit of doing you harm,” Maleficent said. Her fingers still rested against Aurora’s cheek and she sounded far away. 

How long had she been up here, waiting for Aurora to return? She could have—should have—returned to the Moors, returned _home_ , to collect herself. Aurora wouldn’t have blamed her at all if she fled from being surrounded by men garbed in iron as soon as she found the opportunity to do so. 

Instead, though, she’d stayed. Cooped herself up in Aurora’s bedchamber and waited for her return at the end of the night.

Tangled, confused emotions surged through Aurora. Worry, and happiness, and above all love sat warm in her chest, all directed at the woman in front of her, glowing embers that she wished could spark and spread to Maleficent. Overwhelmed by it, but taking care not to move too quickly, Aurora stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Maleficent’s waist in a careful, steady hug.

Her Godmother’s body refused to yield to the contact for long moments and her chest failed to rise against Aurora’s, like she held her breath. Aurora didn’t tighten her arms, but she did press more firmly against Maleficent, like she could make the glowing in her chest spread outward to envelope them both in its warmth. Aurora envisioned it doing just that.

Maybe, just maybe, it worked, because in increments Maleficent relaxed against her. She started breathing again, shallow rises and falls of her chest, and her arms came up to ensconce Aurora’s shoulders and hold her against her. A moment later, the hard curve of a horn rested against the top of Aurora’s head.

And then the most amazing sensation of soft warmth wrapped around her, and it was Aurora’s turn for her breath to falter. Maleficent let out a long breath, the sound of it escaping her lips whispering past Aurora’s ears, and as though a string connected that air to her wings, they pressed around Aurora, enclosing and cocooning her and Maleficent together. 

It was warm, wrapped up in Maleficent’s wings, and Aurora’s head began to droop, her eyelids heavy and flickering shut. Her forehead touched the soft fabric of Maleficent’s robe for a moment and she pulled back, trying to blink herself awake.

“My maid is going to be back with a guard,” she said, not wanting to break the embrace because Maleficent was finally starting to relax, and because she didn’t know when she next might get to be this close. They didn’t hug often. For that matter, Aurora couldn’t think of when they last had.

“I will take my leave, then,” Maleficent said, and now she did draw away. The window they stood near was on a hinge, and Maleficent pushed the glass so it swung outward in a gentle arc. She stepped up onto the ledge and Aurora grimaced, one eye half shut because there was no space she could see for Maleficent to spread her wings from the ledge.

“Godmother, beware Gregory,” she warned, her sleepy brain catching up. “He took guards. They thought—“

“Rightfully so that I had attacked their queen,” Maleficent finished. “He will not find me.” She smiled, expression mysterious and Aurora knew she wouldn’t elaborate even if asked. “Do take care, Beastie.”

“And you.”

A moment later Maleficent stepped from the frame and into the air beyond the window. A surprised shriek slipped from Aurora’s lips and she covered her eyes, only bringing her hands away from them a moment later when a great sound of the air cracking as Maleficent’s wings caught her cut through the night.

Still in her coronation gown, but beyond caring how much more wrinkled it grew, Aurora fell backward onto her bed just as Primrose came scrambling back into the room.

 

The coronation ceremony may have been over, but the celebrations themselves continued for a week. The weather remained clear, rain falling at night and leaving the days open for music and dancing and gaiety. Little work was done in the politics of the realm. They entertained John and Phillip with feasts and parties every night, and counsel sessions had been suspended until such a time as the visiting monarchs returned home.

Aurora’s first week of being queen, then, was a time of leisure and her own celebration of the peace that lay across the kingdom like a gossamer screen, encouraging prosperity and acting as a barrier against the unrest of the kingdoms surrounding them.

“Tell me,” Aurora said. She and Phillip sat in the high-walled private garden that was maintained against the south wall of the castle for use by the royal family. A small stone bench served as their seat, its intricate carvings depicting a griffin and a dragon meeting to hold up the bleached white stone of the cross beam, and roses grew high on trellises around them, blooming red and pink and white.

Phillip tilted his head in quiet curiosity as Aurora tried to wrap her mind around the question she wanted to ask.

“Your borders with the Western kingdom; how are they?”

He sighed, the exhaustion of war falling across his features in an instant. Aurora didn’t feel this was a morning to discuss politics either, but as their wedding and thus the complete binding together of their kingdoms became more imminent, she worried more and more about the responsibilities her people would be asked to bear. Responsibilities like raising arms and going to war. 

Diaval’s telling her that Maleficent was watching the Western borders of the Moors sat heavy in her mind, too. 

“Mountainous, thankfully,” Phillip said. “With the range mostly on our side of the border. We aren’t friends by any means but we at least aren’t constantly involved in skirmishes.” Phillip wore a distasteful expression, his lips twisted and clearly not enjoying their conversation.

The geological advantage was interesting, though, and Aurora pictured the map in her mind. A cluster of kingdoms, her own included, surrounded the Moors like petals surrounding the eye of a flower. The mountain range that ran along the border between Ulstead and the kingdom in the west continued down into the faerie lands some, and the rest of the terrain between the Moors and the western kingdom was the shallow rolling hills at the base of the mountains, covered in dense forest. Not favourable land for battle, but not nearly as insurmountable as Ulstead’s border.

Phillip put a hand on Aurora’s shoulder, a concerned look on his face. She worried her lip between her teeth.

“There is no fear of war, Aurora. Even though Ulstead guards its borders, there is no fear of battle spilling over into the Enchanted Dominion.”

Aurora nodded, wishing she could share in his confidence. She did, at least, force herself to stop biting down on her lip, and that made some of the tension in Phillip’s features seep away.

“If you would like, I can speak with my father and…” Phillip trailed off at the fractured, clattering bursts of sound of men running in armour rising in their direction from the hallway beyond the garden door. They’d left it ajar upon coming out, to allow servants to slip in and out without disturbing them and to alert anyone who came searching for their whereabouts, and now it banged open, nearly crushing the tall cedar tree growing behind.

Frederick stood in the doorway, dark face gleaming with sweat from his run. He sketched a bow to each of them as they rose from the bench. 

“There’s been an emergency counsel meeting called, Majesty, Highness,” he said, speaking quickly. “In light of a skirmish on the far borders of the Moorlands.”

Aurora’s heart leapt up to her throat and she threw herself into motion, Phillip not far behind once he’d lifted his cape from the bench where they’d been using it as a blanket and clipped it around his neck. 

_Battle._

_Maleficent._


	5. Chapter 5

When blood was spilt on fae land soil the protector gained another duty. Death and sickness drew other faeries, darker faeries, to lands already imbued with magic. Creatures of magic though they all were, those who lived in the mounds below had retreated there because they refused to share the surface earth with humans. The Moors, one of the last human-free spaces, had been made so millennia ago without the aid of the courts that had fled when ironwork became more ubiquitous than rare.

Courts. The fae in the mounds were more like humans than they knew. 

Maleficent knelt low to the ground and skimmed her hand above blood darkened dirt, encouraging her magic to run across the surface and through the roots below, picking up what energy was left in the spilled red and transferring it into the trees around. Blood, even man’s blood, held enough power to tempt the mound fae from their millennia-old self-exile, but if the energy dispersed quickly enough, it never reached them.

She closed her eyes at the last of it, and then stood and forced them back open so she could cast her gaze across the corpse the tiny band of invaders had left behind. They didn’t aim to kill on their own ground, _never_ aimed to kill on their own ground, but sometimes necessity dictated rules be broken.

She turned to Balthazar, standing alert nearby, her silent guardian in case she’d been too late in reaching the blood spill and needed to fight against some of their own. “You can be rid of the body?”

He murmured acquiescence, long and slow, then turned his back to her and raised mossy, branchlike arms in a sweeping gesture that beseeched the spirits of the trees around them to grant him aid. Rumbling spread through the ground long moments later, the sounds of roots stirring and causing tremors that threatened to tear a crevasse in the ground beneath their feet. Indeed, Maleficent’s wings flexed and opened a fraction in preparation of just that.

Puffs of dry dirt began to fly up around the body of the fallen human, a man who appeared to have been more scout than solider from his clothing, more tunic than iron. Roots emerged from the soil, tendrils sprouting up all around the body and creeping forward inch by inch to ensnare it, but cautiously, like none wished to be the first to make contact with the figure. 

One root made contact and then they were all on it, wrapped around until they pressed into the flesh and constricting. A moment where the body visibly sunk into the ground, dirt beginning to rise on either side of it and bury it, and then all at once it had been swallowed. They could not give life back to their enemies, but they could return them to the earth.

The air didn’t feel right against her skin, and when she opened her wings in preparation to take to the sky, a gust of wind blew up and made her feathers shiver. She pulled them in again, despite the heat that still sat heavy in the air, close and against her body. Concern sketched through his body, Balthazar turned back to her.

“We’re on the verge of war, then,” she said. Her gaze found the open human lands beyond the edge of the tree line, riddled with bracken and the dirt still torn up from the clash of hours before. She should wall off the Moors from the western kingdom, build a row of thorns to bar the humans from ever stepping foot near the faerie lands again, just as she’d done in the years of Aurora’s childhood. 

In her heart, though, Maleficent knew it wasn’t her fight. With the union with the Kingdom of the Dawn had come a certain responsibility to allow Aurora and her armies fight the wars on their borders. The forming of one kingdom, faerie and human, had turned the Moors into a very different target. 

No longer were they simply free land for humans to try and move into, to take the resources from and scare the rest of the fair folk underground with their brethren. Now they formed an immediate, new kingdom border that butted up against the feud-prone western kingdom. It had happened slowly, but Maleficent could skim through her memories to find when the western kingdom had realized the new opportunities available for their greedy hands.

Humans, _men_ especially, were nearly all the same.

“I should relocate nearer this border,” Maleficent said, in part thinking aloud and in part giving voice to her thoughts for Balthazar’s benefit. He made a querying, disapproving noise, and she raised an eyebrow. “What?” 

Diaval picked that moment to drop own between them, and Maleficent flicked her fingers to morph him to his human shape. 

“Aurora’s people know,” he said at once. 

“Good,” she said, still studying Balthazar. The tree warrior, though, made a broad gesture to Diaval before withdrawing. 

Maleficent scowled. A little over three years ago, she would have demanded he halt in his tracks, root himself to the ground and explain to her the noises he’d made. Easy, too, to recall how that power had felt. She wished it made her tremble now, from the tips of her wings al the way to her toes, but instead shame slid through her veins at how easily she felt she could give in to the dark impulses she’d cultivated in those twenty years.

It was some comfort to her to know that Balthazar wouldn’t have given her any indication of doubt before, though. Perhaps he was starting to come around more quickly than he had been. That thought was enough to chase away some of the shame, at least.

“Why do you think Balthazar would disapprove of my moving to the western half of the Moors?” she asked Diaval.

He scratched at his head, feathers and hair flipping around in the path of his fingers.

“Kinda far from everything, isn’t it?” He looked around as though illustrating his point. True, the forests were thicker here, and the land was raised that much higher than the rest of the Moors from being in the foothills of the mountains. Fewer folk lived here, but it was by no means deserted. 

“This is where the threat is located, Diaval.”

He shrugged. “Whatever you want to do,” he said, and he sounded exasperated and rolled his eyes. “No elder trees to sleep in out here.”

She did love her tree. Still, he was baiting her and she wasn’t sure to what end. 

She studied him for a moment, but Diaval had come a long way from being nothing more than a shape-shifted bird, and he kept his features impassive beyond the judgemental set to them. 

“What have you decided I failed to think of now?” she asked, exasperated and tossing up a hand. 

He smirked at her, victorious. “This is a long way for Aurora to travel,” he said. “Is being close so much more important than her?”

Her feathers puffed up, offence flooding through her like hot water through her veins. How he could even _dare_. “I could of course meet Aurora when she comes,” she said, forcing her voice calm. 

“Do what you want,” Diaval said. “You will anyway.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, the snake in the grass wondering if it was about to get eaten. Possibly, Diaval forgot sometimes that Maleficent was the predator between them, if indeed either of them fit into that role. “I am not hiding, and I am not afraid.”

The calculating look and return of the judgemental set of his features told her both that she’d leapt upon his point, and that he thought she was in denial of her feelings. She was not afraid, she was not hiding, but it would be easier to defend the Moors if she could place her focus on the part that needed protection.

“Very well,” she said, voice stiff and haughty with her refusal to sound at all like she was giving in. “I will not immediately jump to the assumption that today’s struggle will grow in intensity and require constant alertness.”

“And you’ll stay in the elder tree,” he added.

She rolled her eyes and nodded. “Yes, if it means that much to you.”

Diaval gave a little shake of his shoulders, an odd bird gesture that looked strange on a man without wings and feathers to ruffle. A pleased one, though—the raven that had come away successfully with the snake. Maleficent turned away from him and cast far-seeing eyes across the border between the Moors and the human kingdom.

Nothing to be seen, of course. The small band of survivors had announced their retreat almost as soon as Maleficent had arrived. Wings spread and taut with flight, she’d descended from the sky in a fury at the flashing of iron blades within the boundaries of the Moors. She gave them no chance to explain their trespass. The whispers of men near a border where there hadn’t been men in decades were too rampant. Scouts for something, and Maleficent had no desire to make conversation with them and learn what that was.

Her landing, tight in the expanse of trees, had been neither neat nor careful. The body dragged beneath the earth by the roots of the trees around it was the result. Her wings were strong enough to propel her through fierce winds, and that strength made them a great blunt force against anything struck by them.

A sour feeling rose in the pit of Maleficent’s stomach, nausea rising and leading her to turn away from the ground and begin a slow walk deeper into the Moors, back toward her home. She was lucky, so lucky, that she hadn’t struck Aurora out of fear on the night of her coronation. Knocking Aurora to the ground with the force she had had been bad enough. It could have been so much worse. That Aurora didn't fear her now was like the granting of an impossible wish by a faerie far more benevolent than she.

Wishes. She ought to find a suitable engagement gift for Aurora and Phillip. Perhaps an enchantment or magical blessing, one that could help to maintain the peace within the kingdom. She would think of something, and welcome Aurora's input as well. 

Maleficent sighed and looked to the sky, the sun filtering bright and light green through the canopy of thin leaves in their scattered layers above her head. A blessing to keep war away from an entire kingdom's borders. If only she had that type of power.

 

When Aurora next visited, she came with company. Sir Frederick Cunningham, the knight Maleficent had met on the eve of the coronation, rode next to her, his chestnut stallion standing tall and broad next to Aurora's Aracelis. He lacked his armour, and wore only livery to declare himself a knight and member of the Queen’s Guard, but his blade rested sheathed and hanging from the leather belt around his waist.

Her back wrought with tension, muscles pulled so taut that pain stretched from her shoulders to her wing horns, Maleficent studied them with chin raised and wary gaze locked on the pommel of the sword through their approach. Diaval perched in a tree near by.

“Hello, Aurora,” she greeted, but stayed well back, almost hidden within the tree line when they drew to a halt. The knight dismounted first, his horse staying where it was left when he dropped the reins and came around to aid Aurora in sliding down. The deep purple of her dress was edged in a gold the same hue as the embroidery on the house logo on Sir Cunningham’s livery, its shine scarcely duller than the glistening curtain of Aurora’s hair, and they looked like a matched set, light and dark as they were. Unified in their humanity, at the very least.

Maleficent raised a hand to still their approach, still some feet from the tree line and the border into the Moors. Aurora wore a surprised look on her fair features at the gesture but did as bade, drawing Sir Cunningham to a halt beside her with a hand on his arm. Thin golden bangles chimed against one another on her wrist, jostled by her motion. 

“Godmother,” Aurora said with a nod. Then, “What is it?”

“I cannot allow a blade into these woods,” Maleficent said. She gestured toward the knight with a wave of her hand. Like poison into the water source, and then what kind of protector would she be? So many of the creatures in the Moors had only felt the touches of war from the very periphery of it. Even those creatures to whom iron wasn’t toxic and so who had no reason to fear it would bleed if cut with the sharp edge. 

Her duty, as protector, to halt even the slightest threat as early as possible, and one day perhaps she would help to shed the mantle of fear and wariness that so much of the Moors wore in her presence. Was it wrong of her, that she felt she’d moved away from being the Protector simply because it was her duty, and into feeling that she had something to gain by doing as fate had bid?

_Fate._ Well, she would continue to forge her own path and to make her own mistakes, as she always had.

The knight looked nervous, and it didn’t suit his handsome features or the sure stance set in his broad shoulders. His hand drifted toward the pommel of his sword, stilling mid-motion and fiddling with his belt buckle instead, before he dropped his hands to his sides. 

“With respect, Mistress Maleficent,” he said, and inclined his head. “A knight of the realm does not part from his blade from the day he is knighted, save for beneath the roof of a holy order. He even sleeps with it by his side.”

“Then you and your mortal ways can remain in iron lands,” Maleficent said. “For the very trees here will block your passage should you try to approach with iron on your body.”

Aurora touched Cunningham’s arm to still him when he started to respond, then took a few more steps toward Maleficent. She raised her hand, reaching toward Maleficent with it held palm up, as though trying to coax her from the tree line. 

Maleficent remained unmoved, wishing that Aurora’s escort hadn’t come along at all. This was the difference, then, between being a princess and being queen. Iron at her doorstep and a party leery of Maleficent and everything she represented looming over the little time she had to spend with Aurora.

“Frederick is only being cautious because he is charged with my protection,” Aurora said.

Maleficent scowled, the offence flooding through her tinged with that cool feeling of shame that had begun to cling to all that concerned her relationship with Aurora. “There is nothing in the Moors you require protection from,” she said, as much for her own benefit as for the knight’s. 

Cunningham bowed properly at that. “There are some who believe she requires heavy protection from you, Mistress.”

To herself, Maleficent fully admitted that she was owed such a judgment. She favoured the knight with a scowl, and at least Aurora had turned to glare at him as well. She looked embarrassed when she turned back to Maleficent, and now she did step forward until only the high-growing branches of a single shrub stood between them. 

The framing of green leaves around her face brought the rosiness in Aurora’s cheeks out, and highlighted the brightness of her eyes. 

“You know that, whatever you say, I cannot allow iron into the Moors,” she said before Aurora could make her argument. 

“The blade would never see the air.” Indeed, Aurora’s expression said that Maleficent’s stubbornness was needless and uncalled for.

“Even if you wore the sword, Beastie, I would not allow it.”

“It seems we’re at a standstill, then,” Cunningham said. Maleficent looked past Aurora and at the knight, who still stood where the tiny queen had left him. 

Maleficent raised her eyebrows, high and haughty. “We are nothing,” she responded. “You will leave the sword behind, with the horses, or remain behind with it. Should you try and pass this point with the blade, I will choose the latter option for you.”

Aurora took a quick, sharp intake of breath through her nose. It sounded a little like a gasp, and Maleficent stopped herself from glancing quickly to her to try and read the expression on her face. She remained locked in a silent battle of wills with Cunningham instead, neither of them allowing their gaze to stray from the other. Not that there truly lay any contest between them. Cunningham and his steel were intruding here, and Maleficent had the power to ensure that didn’t go any farther. 

Though whether or not Cunningham himself realized that, she couldn’t say for certain. 

In a lopsided, noisy flapping of wings in the narrow space between branches, Diaval descended from where he’d been perched up high and landed so heavily on the top of her staff it was as though his wings had completely stopped working. He didn’t turn around to look at her, seemed to be ignoring her altogether save for her use as a convenient perch, and instead swayed his head from side to side as though looking between Cunningham and Aurora, studying the two.

Aurora turned a pleading look on the raven, her brow crinkled high and her eyes wide. Diaval gurgled a warble in return and turned around, one careful foot raised at a time, to look at Maleficent. She, in turn, ignored the obvious request to shift his form. After a moment, he gave a frustrated flap of his wings and pivoted right back around.

Something shifted in Aurora’s face, emotions crossing one after the other, and Maleficent thought she glimpsed the stark pain of horror in those wide young eyes as, while she watched, Aurora’s stance changed. She kept her lips shut tight on seeking out the why, thought that perhaps she would find pity in that bright mind that she would rather not know dwelled there.

Aurora turned to face Cunningham in a swirl of purple skirts and golden hair. “Frederick, please leave your sword behind,” she requested.

Tension rushed from Maleficent’s body. Perhaps they could make this visit work after all, even with the unwelcome human party in attendance.

Cunningham’s stance became stiffer, though, his expression tight and argumentative, and Maleficent could see the thoughts flashing across his features. With Aurora’s back facing her she couldn’t tell if the same play of emotions spirited one after another on her face, a silent battle of wills that allowed Cunningham to avoid being offensive in his insubordination. 

Maleficent suspected not. Aurora’s ability to wield her stubborn, unmoving regal face was unparalleled. The young queen knew just when, and how, to pull forward her power, and how to assert it without any words at all, and if perhaps the situations she chose to use it in weren’t always wholly appropriate, well, she would learn.

“Sir Cunningham,” Aurora said, making the name a sentence. Her head shifted the slightest bit upward, chin angled toward the sky.

Cunningham bowed, one hand clenched into a fist and pressed over his heart. In a smooth, quick motion that telegraphed none of the reluctance he’d been expressing, he removed his sword belt and bound it to one of his saddle straps. Without the belt his tunic hung loose, shapeless and morphing his livery from a uniform to something more robe-like, even short as it was. 

“I promise you will love the Moors,” Aurora said, practically gushing and the regal tone vanished from her voice with her orders having been carried out. 

"I'm sure I will," he replied, no hint of facetiousness to the tone. 

Maleficent narrowed her eyes as the pair grew closer, sure that the knight had another blade hiding somewhere on his person that he'd decided to conceal. When she'd met the man on the day of Aurora's coronation he hadn't been tense, exactly, but he had been wary and disguised it with his mask of politeness, and that had been with him fully armed and surrounded by his own folk. 

That wariness clung to him now and Maleficent didn’t fault him it. Not with the way the eve of the coronation had passed. Would Aurora even suspect this man carried another knife? She supposed not. 

Diaval knew, though. Maleficent could see it in the tilt of his head and the glint in his eye, the way he stood on the staff posed to swoop forward at any moment. 

Normally Aurora would ride straight through the Moors’ forest boundary. Today she left her mount with Cunningham’s. He approached their spot carefully, picking his way around trees and through low brambles, looking for a path where there was none. 

“Watch him,” she ordered Diaval in a low voice. He launched himself into the air and back to his tree branch perch, and Maleficent beckoned for Aurora to follow her.

“An escort for your social calls?” she asked lightly, trying not to betray how constricted she felt by Cunningham’s presence, some five feet behind them, and not to telegraph her worry that his walking through the Moors might somehow harm them.

Aurora looked apologetic. “They never did like me sneaking off to visit you,” she admitted. “And now that I’m queen, and officially engaged to Phillip, everyone’s a lot more worried about my wellbeing.”

Maleficent sniffed. “There’s more worry of something befalling you on your ride here,” she said. Then narrowed her eyes. “Nothing _has_ happened?”

“Of course not,” Aurora said, and laid one comforting hand briefly on Maleficent’s arm. “But I did want to extend an offer to you.” 

Maleficent nodded, encouraging her to continue, tendrils of thought reaching through her mind and trying to come up with whatever came next without very much success at all. 

“My counsel needs a representative for the Moors. It doesn’t make any sense for anyone but you to hold it, Godmother.”

Maleficent very nearly laughed, but Aurora’s face was a mask of sincerity, and seriousness, and if she saw at all why Maleficent couldn’t possibly do what Aurora was asking of her, that didn’t show in her expression any more than humour did.

“Have you passed this idea by your counsel?” she asked, tone as delicate as could be, words lighter than misty droplets striking water. 

“I will tell them of my decision after you’ve accepted.” Aurora’s voice was hard, assertive, and Maleficent’s heart glowed with pride that melted a sliver of the worry freezing up her insides over how she could possibly convince Aurora that her idea wasn’t the best.

“I cannot live in the castle, or in your world,” she said, not quite skirting the subject. Surely moving up and into the castle was part of what would be required of her, though, and that was an absolute impossibility. “Perhaps a delegate. One of the pixies, perhaps.”

Aurora made a face. “You’re joking, and you’re making fun of me.”

“A little,” Maleficent agreed, pulling in her wings to navigate through a particularly tightly growing clump of trees. “Aurora, I trust you to represent the Moors.”

The young queen said something under her breath, a quick slew of words that Maleficent couldn’t separate, even after years of listening to pixie chatter.

“What was that?”

Aurora took in a long breath, so long and deep that Maleficent could hear it whistling in through her nostrils, and she placed the butt of her staff in Aurora’s path to draw her up short. Turning, she looked down to find Aurora wearing an expression that said she was trying to summon up enough courage to get out whatever she wanted to say.

It took a deep breath on her own part to stabilize the sudden pounding of her heart, but slowly and surely Maleficent opened out and extended one wing to cup behind Aurora’s slight figure. The ends of her hair just tickled along the long spread feathers.

“Aurora?” she prompted.

Bright eyes filled to the brim with amazement stared up at her for a moment, then swept their gaze all across the stretch of wing between their bodies.

“They’re afraid of you,” she said finally, and the awe in her features carried through to her voice. Whether or not Aurora's admiration was for the wing stretching around her back or for the fear her counsel felt for Maleficent, the feathers at the base of her wings prickled in response to the words. Fear of her, and of the creatures that lived in the Moors alongside her, would either keep them very safe, or put them in grave danger. She didn't want to risk the latter, not when she thought things had already begun to spiral in that direction.

"If they are afraid," she said, "then I would imagine perhaps they would be less than fond of my spending time in their politics."

Aurora glared at her, the expression made less severe than usual by a happy, content sparkle in her eyes. "Would you rather decisions about the Moors were made without your knowledge?" she demanded.

Maleficent raised her eyebrows. "Do you have plans that would be to the detriment of the Moors?" 

"Not I," Aurora countered, biting out the words. "But other members of my counsel may well indeed." Her voice betrayed anxiety in a shrill rising of tone. Maleficent laid a hand on her shoulder, her thumb brushing Aurora's collarbone a couple of times in light, slow strokes. The more she heard from Aurora in these recent weeks, the more certain she was that Aurora wasn't queen in anything but title, and worse that Aurora had decided that hiding that fact from Maleficent was her best course forward.

"I will think on it."

Aurora smiled as though Maleficent had agreed outright.

 

"Ambassador?" Diaval sounded sceptical. "You?"

Maleficent pursed her lips, her gaze locked on Cunningham and Aurora far below the rocky pillar where she and Diaval sat. Aurora had spent the bulk of the day showing the knight around with some glee, happiness in her face and pose especially when he was willing to doff his stockings and shoes in favour of going barefoot. At the time, Maleficent had assumed it an action done to humour Aurora, and also to acknowledge that he needed to follow her lead if he was to respect her as his queen. Even if that had driven his actions, though, Cunningham soon began dragging his toes through the sparkling waters and wading in deep with the wallerbogs.

The residents themselves were wary of this new human within their midst; winged-folk stayed clear when normally they would flock to Aurora, perhaps taking their cues from Maleficent herself, who refused to let him from her sight but all the while kept her distance. 

"Is there another you'd choose?" she asked.

“Me?” he suggested. She turned to look at him, a snap of her head to the side, her eyes wide. He burst out laughing at the expression on her face, the sound rough and sharp like a raven’s call echoing across the rocks down below.

“If I thought I could thrust the duty upon you, I would,” she said. “Don’t offer unless you’re serious.”

Diaval shrugged. “Not two days ago you wanted to move to the western border, and now you’re thinking about spending all your time up at the castle. I don’t think you know what you want.”

She didn’t. That was the problem. Duty, though, directed her to place the Moors always first and foremost in her actions, ahead of her own desires. Maleficent wanted peace, and peace would only remain if she stayed fast to her duty. In a way it was so simple as to be poetic.

“I will go,” she said, and she felt heavy, like the words were an oath binding themselves with magic to her soul. “Whatever Aurora needs of me, if it is in my power I will deliver it to her.”

Diaval gave her a long look, knowing weight in his eyes, and finally he nodded. “Be careful with that promise,” he said.

Maleficent closed her eyes and bowed her head. As though care could have any hope of aiding her now.


	6. Chapter 6

When Aurora next saw Maleficent her heart plummeted into her stomach and landed like a rock, sinking straight to the depths as though it might fall right out of her body. If it weren’t for the great wings gracing her silhouette and her spiralling descent from the sky, the faerie could have been the Maleficent of three years prior. She cut a striking, terrifying figure, swathed head-to-toe in black and with her severe alabaster features exaggerated by the steep widow’s peak her hairpiece created. 

Maleficent landed light on her feet and with nary a ripple of wind to rustle Aurora’s veil, wings folded in to arch above her head. Her eyes sharp, features pointed, she swept her gaze past Aurora and across their empty balcony meeting place, as though expecting men with swords to leap from the shadows.

Though it was high noon and the shadows around them few and far between, she probably was.

No raven came down in her wake to land upon her shoulder, and Aurora held back a moment in case Diaval lagged behind. It was with concern marring her features that Aurora stepped forward to hug Maleficent, and the affection was returned with only the barest touch of long fingers to her shoulder. Disappointment swept through Aurora at the absence of warm, tickling feathers trailing across her back.

“Are you well, Godmother?” she asked, even knowing as the words passed her lips that the inadequate question wouldn’t garner her a response worth anything. Indeed, the faerie smiled wide and her gaze was gentle, but her ethereal, un-aging features betrayed little other than a hint of sadness.

Sadness, Aurora supposed, that had driven her to return to her black-garbed state.

“I am fine, Beastie,” she said, but didn’t sound it. Maleficent had a way of painting her voice, making even the most unaffected, detached words reach deep and pull. 

“Thank you for coming,” Aurora said, and bowed her head a little. That earned her a touch of a smile from the other woman. 

“I do not think you need me,” Maleficent said. Aurora almost looked away, not wanting to face the confidence in her shining through the faerie’s features. She wished she had the same confidence in herself, wished that she could think of a way to assert her power as queen without having to bring Maleficent into it.

It had worried her for days, the thought that she might be undermining her own power by bringing in the very woman that the kingdom had been so against for so long. Within that worry was couched dread in the very back of her mind that Gregory would have a contingent of soldiers waiting when Maleficent arrived, even against all of Aurora’s own, quite outspoken, wishes.

She’d arranged to meet Maleficent on her own balcony to avoid any immediate clashes with the latter. The former she would deal with slowly, carefully, and Maleficent at least would help if her reluctance to participate in any way in the politics of the realm were anything to go by.

“The Moors need you to be their representative,” Aurora said, as she had when inviting Maleficent to join her counsel. Maleficent believed Aurora could speak for the Moors, perhaps not realizing that trying to rule over an entirely non-human population was without precedent. 

Maleficent raised one eyebrow at her and Aurora added, “And I could use your support.”

“And the support of my reputation,” Maleficent said. Aurora detected no annoyance, only statement of fact, and she smiled.

“It will help,” she said. “You’ll see what I mean once the session starts.”

“I believe you. But I maintain my view that you do not require my assistance."

How embarrassed would Aurora be, later, when Maleficent witnessed first hand just how much Aurora had to fight to have her words acknowledged by the men of the counsel? Heat rushed upward through her at the thought, and her cheeks flushed. Maleficent leaned in toward her, and Aurora pivoted to lead the way from the balcony and into the castle. 

She didn’t know if the emotion rushing through her was brought on by anger or embarrassment, and regardless neither was something she cared to voice to Maleficent. Later. They could talk later, after the counsel sat and when Maleficent wouldn’t tell her she was simply misinterpreting, or whatever she might say if Aurora broached the topic now.

Not that she really truly believed that Maleficent would ever think to take the side of a group of men she didn’t know over Aurora’s word. Especially not when Aurora was upset. Still, _still_ …

Long, thin fingers touched her shoulder and Aurora paused, half-turned to look at her companion. Maleficent looked concerned, but the far away look in her eyes suggested it had nothing to do with Aurora and how red her face may or may not still be. 

“Beastie, I don’t want you to worry when we sit in front of your counsel,” she began, and sounded hesitant. 

“Worry?” Aurora echoed. Did Maleficent really think she hadn’t been worried since the moment she’d first appeared this morning? For that matter, that she hadn’t worried since first asking her if she’d come to sit on the counsel and be an influence on how Aurora governed the kingdom.

“I am not going to be easy to deal with, Beastie. I am not going to accept whatever the lords of your counsel may say…” she trailed off, concern still painted across her face. Aurora, though, nodded her encouragement. Had Maleficent not realised that this was precisely why Aurora wanted her present?

“I do not want you to think I am upset with you, in any way, regardless of what I may say, or do.”

She met Aurora’s eyes with a very solemn expression, like she might push herself back into the air in flight and return to the Moors if Aurora expressed even the slightest amount of doubt in her ability to handle Maleficent’s warning. 

“Yours won’t be the only angry voice,” she promised. “I can handle it.”

No argument came from the faerie, but Aurora didn’t know if that was because Maleficent believed her or because she didn’t want to express any doubt so early in this arrangement. She couldn’t fathom either what Maleficent might think she could say or do that required such a warning be given in advance.

Maleficent didn’t look wholly convinced that Aurora understood her warning, either, and perhaps she didn’t. Time had been a healing friend to the faerie, her wings being returned to her speeding the process and lifting Maleficent’s mood ten-fold in the past three years. The Moors themselves were the truest, boldest representation of that shift in mood, Maleficent’s power being strong enough that it tempered the very land on which she walked.

The darkness that her counsel feared still lurked in Maleficent. Aurora couldn’t conceive of the creature she knew being able to cast such a curse as the one that she’d put over Aurora as an infant, not really. But sometimes the waters in the Moors rushed a little too quickly, the rains pounded unseasonably heavy, and the other creatures of the fey lands kept their distance. 

“You’ll be late, Majesty,” Primrose said from the doorway. In her hands rested the thin velvet pillow liner of her crown’s storage chest, the heavy golden piece itself nestled carefully in the centre. The maid managed to dip a half-curtsey to herself and Maleficent, even with her hands full.

Primrose kept her gaze trained on Maleficent long after the curtsey, either not caring that she stared or too stunned by the faerie’s presence that she didn’t realize it. She didn’t move from the doorway.

Aurora tapped her toe with enough force that her shoe slapped against the stone beneath, the sound muffled by her skirts but still enough that Primrose broke from her stunned pose and sprang into motion with a burst of speed, caught herself and slowed almost at once. 

“Allow me,” Maleficent said, stepping forward.

Primrose stood close enough that Aurora heard the quick, gasping intake of breath get caught in the middle of her maid’s chest, any sound she might have made swallowed. Her fingers tightened on the pillow, creating little indents in the velvet. 

Maleficent ignored all this and lifted the crown from the pillow, just the tips of her long fingers touching the precious gold, and the digits flexing as though it weighed nothing at all. Aurora dipped her head enough to ease Maleficent’s placing the coronet on her head.

It felt lighter with Maleficent standing next to her, her height and wings casting a long shadow across the doorway.

“Thank you, Primrose. Please inform the kitchens that I’ll be taking evening meal in my rooms tonight with Mistress Maleficent as my guest.”

Primrose curtseyed again, this time fully and with the pillow clenched in one hand, and disappeared back into the castle.

 

After the panic of the night of her coronation, Aurora didn’t know _how_ the counsel might react to her arriving with Maleficent in tow. Even the most rational members thought that her brain had been rattled when she’d fallen and struck her head and in the wake of the injury had still been sympathetic to Maleficent, and Gregory had made allusions to a belief that Aurora was under a spell.

She’d called off Gregory’s witch-hunt as soon as she’d been able; the following morning as soon as she’d risen and Frederick had informed her that Maleficent was still being hunted, the charge being attacking the queen. 

Worry had clenched her heart, despite having seen Maleficent safe in the instants before she’d fallen asleep, and knowing that the likelihood of Gregory chasing her down into the Moors was slim. It turned out that he hadn’t gone so far; he’d skirted the borders but still treated the Moors like a different land, as though stepping foot into the dense woods that surrounded them would be an act of war he wasn’t allowed to declare.

Aurora feared that it might have been. 

The days following Phillip’s departure and the initial report of the battle between the Moors and the western kingdom had been tense. They grew tenser still at the reports that came in of skirmishes on the border of the southern and western kingdoms. Nothing to do with herself or Phillip, keeping the Kingdom of the Dawn and Ulstead out of it all, but enough to make Aurora sleep poorly and tangle her hands in her skirt when awake. 

Maleficent agreeing to sitting on her counsel had been the most uplifting moment since, well, since she’d seen Maleficent after her coronation and been enveloped in those great wings. She couldn’t fathom what it meant that the faerie had initiated the contact, but she hoped it was a sign of healing. Maleficent had remained her mostly impassive self since, though, and Aurora didn’t dare pry.

Besides, all of her attention had turned to focus on worry for how her counsel might overreact, now that the dark faerie had returned to the castle. She had warned them of Maleficent’s intended attendance, of course, but that seemed to mean little for how tempers raged in the counsel chamber, particularly when it came to Maleficent.

Either no one spoke of her, or they shouted about her. There was no in between, and Aurora doubted the difference Maleficent’s presence would make.

Though she and Maleficent entered the counsel chamber only a few minutes later than the scheduled meeting time, all of the men were present and seated at the table, mostly silent as servants made a circuit of filling goblets with wine. Whiteflower and Cunningham, talking lowly at the near end of the table, were the first to look up and fall silent. The rest of the room followed suit, the serving men in their bright livery freezing in place, one in a half-bow, at the sight of Maleficent looming behind Aurora.

Gregory stood and the rest of the room came into motion alongside him, the racket of heavy chairs scraping against the floor filling the room as they all rose. 

With no one to announce herself or Maleficent, Aurora led the way through the narrow room, wanting to glance back to check that the clearance was enough for Maleficent to handle her wings but unable to without craning her neck and squinting and otherwise looking _un-queen-like_. Maleficent was fine of course, and Aurora knew that, but relief still slid through her when she reached her seat at the head of the table and saw Maleficent waiting to sit toward the foot. A space had been cleared around her, the men keeping their distance, which suited Maleficent as well as if she had personally orchestrated it from the arch to her brow.

Aurora sat, and her counsel sat after her.

“As you are all aware already,” Aurora began before she had to field any interruptions from anyone who might want to speak over her. “I’ve requested Mistress Maleficent sit in on any counsel meeting in the future which will discuss the Moors. She has agreed to give us her time and to share her knowledge of the lands which border directly with the Western kingdom.”

Rebellion was in the faces of all who regarded her, and when Aurora paused in her speech no one turned to acknowledge Maleficent. They had been pretending, and for a while, that the charts and knowledge of the past kings of the Kingdom of the Dawn knew all there was to know about the Moors. Aurora had spent her time there. The first time she’d seen a map within the castle that made claim of being an accurate representation of part of the Moors, she’d nearly laughed.

“We need to send men to watch the western border,” Whiteflower said. “Majesty, sitting on our hands is welcoming invasion. Take this advice from those who have lived through war.”

Maleficent’s wings rustled, forcing the attention in the room over to her.

“The border is watched,” she said. “And there will be more problems born than solved if you try to sit an army along it.”

Aurora laid her hand flat on the table, quiet but pressing the pads of her fingers firmly against the wood beneath them. Maleficent _had_ warned her, and she should have expected that the faerie would be unyielding from the very outset. Still. The tension around the table shot up as Maleficent spoke, the words sounding like a threat whether the faerie meant them that way or not—and Aurora was almost positive that was how they had been meant.

Aurora waited a moment for the challenge, the instant retort of one of the counsel members at already being told no.

None came.

Gregory tapped his finger on the map unrolled in front of him. “Ulstead has agreed to loan us scouts until we’re able to train our own soldiers in what they need to be looking for. They have dealt with the Western kingdom for much longer than we have and have preparations in place that we must adopt before the invasions begin.”

Maleficent made a motion and Aurora looked toward her and met her gaze. The men had elected to ignore her, and lines of discontentment and ire shot through her expression. Her eyes seemed to glow green in the dimness of the room, gaze asking for Aurora to grant her permission for whatever malfeasance lurked in her mind. 

Aurora looked away, not granting permission but not denying it either.

“Would you pay a carpenter to shoe a horse?” Maleficent asked in a dry tone.

It garnered her some attention, at least. Cunningham, seated nearest to Maleficent, turned full in his chair to look at her. 

“Explain, please,” Aurora said. 

Maleficent sighed, her voice pitched beneath it to sound put-upon and almost childish, and the faerie rolled her eyes to stare up at the ceiling as she began to speak. 

“Not a soul in this room is unaware of the difference in border between the Moors and the kingdom to the west, and Ulstead and the kingdom to the west.”

Muttering from the men in the room, the tone not dissenting but still annoyed, the ears listening with scarcely any recognition for the voice speaking, never mind any sort of respect for the speaker. Listen they did, though, and Aurora couldn’t ask for any more of them at this juncture, not when they paid little enough mind to her when she spoke as it was. 

“Scouts trained in the mountains would be utterly out of their league in the Moors,” Maleficent continued. “And not entirely because the creatures there would…” Here she paused, as though searching for the best way to describe the fey inhabitants of the Moors, and then smiled. “Go out of their way to further inhibit the ability of your men to do their jobs.”

“It’d be your duty to keep them in line then, wouldn’t it, _Mistress_?” Gregory asked, voice laden with sarcasm. The deep lines of his face showed no humour, and no willingness to deal with Maleficent’s being anything but willing to bow and scrape and allow access to the Moors for whomever and whatever the counsel might see fit to send there.

Maleficent’s smile went from carrying hints of humour to being icy in a blink. “You would be incorrect,” she said, showing teeth.

“As they always have been, the Moors continue to be self-governing,” Aurora said. 

Gregory scoffed but bowed his head in her direction. “I had only assumed, Majesty,” he began, and he spoke with enough space between his words that the care with which he chose them was evident. “That the fae— _Mistress Maleficent_ was present at this table because of some capacity of governance over her section of the realm, as each Lord at this table sees to the comings-and-goings of his own lands.”

“The Moors have no need for the submissive practices of men to their lords,” Maleficent said, words dripping with such disdain it might have been creeping across the floor to fill the room. Certainly the chamber seemed cooler, a draft with an indiscernible origin point slipping through it.

“Chaos,” grunted Whiteflower. 

The room grew colder again, and there was some shuffling as the men around the table pulled thin, summer-weight clothing closer to their shoulders. Maleficent's features were stony, impassive. Aurora made a conscious effort to keep her hands still and flat, fingers uncurled, but braced herself for a rush of green magic through the room.

None came. A moment of silence dragged across the table, three flickers of the candle flame nearest Aurora, before Maleficent spoke again. Her voice rode low and quiet over the tension.

“I will report any transgressions against the border to Aurora, as I have done, and the Moors will continue to defend themselves, as they have done.”

“Unacceptable!” snapped Whiteflower. All eyes turned to him. With cheeks red and puffed up, white beard bristling in his aggravation, Whiteflower perched on the edge of his chair.

He met Aurora’s gaze. “Majesty, ceding control of our lands to an unorganized band of rabble that recognises no lord is handing the lands over to the Western kingdom.”

Maleficent rolled her eyes and Aurora could feel the situation sliding through her fingers like fine grains of sand.

“Your lands?” Maleficent echoed, and the chill had returned to her voice, a cool counterpart to the exacerbation telegraphed in her features. “The Moors belong to no one creature; faerie, human or otherwise.”

“The Moors call Her Majesty Queen Aurora their sovereign ruler,” Whiteflower said. He glanced at Gregory as he spoke, and Aurora pressed her lips together to refrain from directing any obvious display of suspicion toward them. 

Was Whiteflower Gregory’s chosen mouthpiece for this meeting? Certainly he hadn’t spared his thoughts for Aurora’s ruling in meetings prior to this, but normally he presented his concerns with a modicum more care than he’d taken so far this meeting.

Gregory himself gave his usual grunts of agreement, but more, he looked satisfied and smug and not at all as though he thought he might not get whatever he wanted from this meeting. 

Maleficent, perceptive as she was, intelligent as he was, hadn’t noticed. Aurora should have warned her about Gregory. It wasn’t fair of her to bring the faerie in to fight her battles for her without ever letting her know the true opponent’s identity.

“Tell me,” Maleficent said, not acknowledging at all that the Moors had crowned Aurora and claimed her as their own long before the Kingdom of the Dawn had seen fit to follow suit. “Who among the counsellors in this room served the King before Stefan?”

The green in Maleficent’s eyes had chased away the fold, and her pupils glowed eerily, like will o’wisps that might leap from her skull if prodded the wrong way. She looked less like a woman and more a wild, untameable thing the longer she sat in this room, and yet she hadn’t done anything but defend herself and her right to the lands he called home.

It didn’t make Aurora feel any better to reflect on the warning her godmother had imparted on her arrival. Already, Aurora had lost the woman she knew to the creature who had surfaced in her place. 

The men in the room shuffled and none answered.

“Not one of you, or are you ashamed?” Maleficent asked.

“The old king’s counsellors have all passed, Mistress,” Cunningham said finally. “We were younger men, new to the politics of the realm and letting our fathers do the ruling when Stefan took the throne.”

“Weren’t too self-involved to have been unaware of the promise the old king made,” Wellersley said.

The tension in the room rose. Maleficent’s features spread into a truly terrifying, grotesque imitation of a smile.

Aurora let her gaze flit across the faces around the table, her mind racing, unable to come up with any reason for a discussion of the defence of the land to have taken such a turn, let alone the deepening of the chilly animosity between her counsellors and Maleficent.

“I’m sure it was quite a popular prospect,” Maleficent said, her teeth bared. Then she blinked and turned her attention fully to Aurora, and her features softened for a fraction of a moment. “But we were discussing, I believe, your desire to station men bearing iron within the Moors.”

The men looked unsettled, which Aurora suspected had been Maleficent’s plan all along. Whatever it was that Aurora herself was missing from the conversation, and a thrill of triumph ran through the young queen’s blood, hot and victorious in her veins.

“As the Moors and those fey folk who reside within them have before proven their ability to render useless your human armies and their sharpened steel, I hardly see why they should entrust their protection to that same defeated opponent,” Maleficent said. Her wings shifted and rustled as she prepared to rise, and only then did Aurora realize just how still she’d held them throughout the meeting.

“Until you have developed a plan of defence that I can agree to, the Moors will defend themselves. I will dispatch my servant, Diaval, with any important news. Any attempt to breech the borders of the Moors by armed men will be responded to with hostility, whether those men be from the west or from the east.”

She rose, towering over the room even without the added height of her horns and bulk of her wings. “These are my terms. They are not flexible. I do not negotiate with men.”

Wind blasted through the room, extinguishing the candles and driving Aurora’s hair backward. It lifted papers into the air, scattering them onto the floor and into plates, laps and faces. In the midst of it all Maleficent turned on her heel and left, magical wind—her wings hadn’t moved—dispersing as soon as she was out of view.

Hair settled in a tangle around her shoulders and across her face, and a poorly drawn map of the Moors lying across her hands on the table, Aurora sat stunned. Stunned that Maleficent could storm out as she had, with no solutions and only threats. The corner of Aurora’s eye stung but she didn’t dare lift a hand to wipe at it. Around her, counsellors and servants collected pages and relit candles and tried to put the counsel chamber back in order.

Maleficent had told her not to take anything she said or did to heart. Had said she wouldn’t temper herself. Was this… was the unrelenting, threatening creature Aurora had borne witness to who Maleficent truly was?

Before the meeting, if the disaster that had just befallen the counsel chamber could be called that, Aurora had been unable to equate the patient, kind and loving, if sarcastic and distant, faerie with the sorceress who had cursed her at birth. After long, tense minutes when Maleficent seemed on the verge of lashing out and decimating the counsel chamber and all in it, Aurora couldn’t understand how she’d missed such a crucial part of her character.

And she didn’t know yet how to feel about it.

 

Back in her bedchamber long after the counsel had finished sitting, Aurora worried her lip as she gazed out the window. She'd expected Maleficent to have made her retreat to Aurora's rooms again, as she had the night of the coronation, but the faerie was no where to be seen. No doubt she'd returned to the Moors. After the scene she'd made in the counsel chamber it was likely the safest option for her anyway. Her counsellor's tempers ran hot, their egos scorched, and they hadn't been shy about crying for revenge or announcing their refusal to acquiesce to the demands made by the faerie in the wake of Maleficent's exit.

She'd declared the meeting closed before civil war could break out.

"Primrose," she said, and spun to look for her maid. Primrose looked up from where she was turning down the bedclothes in preparation for Aurora to retire for the night, and dipped a curtsy.

"Ma'am?"

"Find out if Sir Cunningham is still within the castle. If he is, I require his presence here immediately."

Primrose glanced out of the window, into the darkening sky beyond. They were still in the longest days of the year and it was later than it looked outside, but the sun's slow setting and the feeling that she needed to do something, and now, invigorated Aurora. 

Primrose dipped another curtsy. "Of course, your Majesty," she said, and gave a swipe of her hand across the folded down duvet, her hand removing a wrinkle, before she darted from the room.

Alone, Aurora rested her forehead against the cool stone beside the window. Frederick would ride out to the Moors with her with little objection, even this time of the night. What she would say to Maleficent when she arrived, though, she hadn't the faintest idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot is moving so slowly and the lengths between updates aren't helping. Sorry guys.

**Author's Note:**

> http://shieldivarius.tumblr.com


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